The report placed processed meat into its Group 1 category, which means the panel found “sufficient evidence” that it could cause cancer. While other substances in this group include alcohol, asbestos and tobacco smoke, they do not all share the same level of hazard. The risk attributed to smoking, for example, is many orders of magnitude greater than the risk associated with eating red meat, said Dr. John Ioannidis, the chairman of disease prevention at Stanford University.