Everyday Fear Factors of a Meat Based Diet
Everyday Fear Factors of a Meat Based Diet
By F. Vernon Chandler
I only watched one episode of NBC’s Fear Factor. Once was enough! I found the show
disgusting. Especially repulsive was a stunt requiring contestants to eat pastry filled with
various live insects. Ugh!!
More grotesque than this stunt are the everyday fear factors associated with the meat based
diet of many humans. Consider the very real fear factors of those who choose to consume
animal flesh:
Fear Factor #1: Go torture and kill a sentient being!
Eight billion animals are killed for food every year in the United States alone. These are
creatures with many of the same emotions and feelings as humans. Many of these farm
animals would be loyal and loving pets if raised as such. Under the conditions of factory
farming, animals suffer in crowded and filthy conditions until the terrifying day of their
slaughter. By purchasing and consuming factory farm animal products, you are supporting this
cruel and inhumane system.
Fear Factor #2: Have some antibiotics, hormone drugs and pesticides with your pastry!
Animals are pumped full of powerful antibiotics and hormone drugs to kill diseases resulting
from filthy living conditions and to make them grow and produce faster. These same drugs can
be found in the meat you eat. Since pesticides become concentrated as they move up through
the food chain, meat contains 14 times the amount of pesticides as plant food.
Fear Factor #3: Increase your odds for developing a chronic or life threatening disease!
Overall, meat eaters have substantially increased risks for obesity, heart disease, high blood
pressure, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis, and some forms of cancer - particularly lung and
colon cancer.
Fear Factor #4: Help starve a human child!
Every two seconds a child dies somewhere in the world from starvation. Raising animals for
food is an extremely inefficient way to feed a growing human population. The livestock
population of the United States consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times
the entire human population of the country.
We feed farm animals 80% of the corn we grow and over 95% of the oats. It requires three-
and-a-half acres to supply one person a meat based diet for a year, whereas it only requires
one-sixth of an acre to feed a human a vegetarian diet. If Americans reduced their meat
consumption by only 10 percent, it would free 12 million tons of grain annually for human
consumption. This alone would be sufficient to feed each of the 60 million people who starve to
death each year.
Fear Factor #5: Help destroy our planet!
You can’t be an environmentalist and eat a meat based diet. Over half of the water used in the
United States is for growing livestock feed. It takes over 100 times as much water to produce
meat than to produce the nutritionally equivalent in wheat.
U.S. livestock produces 250,000 pounds of waste per second. This is 20 times more than
humans. However, there are no sewage treatment facilities for this waste. Animal waste
washed into our rivers and lakes causes increased nitrates, phosphates, ammonia and
bacteria. Oxygen content in water is decreased. Aquatic life is killed. The meat industry
creates three times as much organic waste as all other U.S. industries combined.
Who needs a reality based television show to bring fear factors into our homes? Eating a meat
based diet is a very real and an everyday source of sufficient fear for those who choose such a
diet. It has been 9 years since I made the conscious decision to follow a vegetarian diet.
Going vegetarian has not only improved my health, but I now feel it was the best ethical and
spiritual decision of my life. I encourage other Unitarian Universalists to consider the benefits
of following a vegetarian diet. Can we really respect the interdependent web of existence of
which we are all a part and not be vegetarian?
F. Vernon Chandler is a Unitarian Universalist minister, former editor of the Universalist Herald
and a member-at-large of the UFETA (Unitarian Universalists for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals) Board of Trustees. The above article appeared on the UFETA website and is
reprinted in the Herald with permission of the author.
By F. Vernon Chandler
I only watched one episode of NBC’s Fear Factor. Once was enough! I found the show
disgusting. Especially repulsive was a stunt requiring contestants to eat pastry filled with
various live insects. Ugh!!
More grotesque than this stunt are the everyday fear factors associated with the meat based
diet of many humans. Consider the very real fear factors of those who choose to consume
animal flesh:
Fear Factor #1: Go torture and kill a sentient being!
Eight billion animals are killed for food every year in the United States alone. These are
creatures with many of the same emotions and feelings as humans. Many of these farm
animals would be loyal and loving pets if raised as such. Under the conditions of factory
farming, animals suffer in crowded and filthy conditions until the terrifying day of their
slaughter. By purchasing and consuming factory farm animal products, you are supporting this
cruel and inhumane system.
Fear Factor #2: Have some antibiotics, hormone drugs and pesticides with your pastry!
Animals are pumped full of powerful antibiotics and hormone drugs to kill diseases resulting
from filthy living conditions and to make them grow and produce faster. These same drugs can
be found in the meat you eat. Since pesticides become concentrated as they move up through
the food chain, meat contains 14 times the amount of pesticides as plant food.
Fear Factor #3: Increase your odds for developing a chronic or life threatening disease!
Overall, meat eaters have substantially increased risks for obesity, heart disease, high blood
pressure, diabetes mellitus, osteoporosis, and some forms of cancer - particularly lung and
colon cancer.
Fear Factor #4: Help starve a human child!
Every two seconds a child dies somewhere in the world from starvation. Raising animals for
food is an extremely inefficient way to feed a growing human population. The livestock
population of the United States consumes enough grain and soybeans to feed over five times
the entire human population of the country.
We feed farm animals 80% of the corn we grow and over 95% of the oats. It requires three-
and-a-half acres to supply one person a meat based diet for a year, whereas it only requires
one-sixth of an acre to feed a human a vegetarian diet. If Americans reduced their meat
consumption by only 10 percent, it would free 12 million tons of grain annually for human
consumption. This alone would be sufficient to feed each of the 60 million people who starve to
death each year.
Fear Factor #5: Help destroy our planet!
You can’t be an environmentalist and eat a meat based diet. Over half of the water used in the
United States is for growing livestock feed. It takes over 100 times as much water to produce
meat than to produce the nutritionally equivalent in wheat.
U.S. livestock produces 250,000 pounds of waste per second. This is 20 times more than
humans. However, there are no sewage treatment facilities for this waste. Animal waste
washed into our rivers and lakes causes increased nitrates, phosphates, ammonia and
bacteria. Oxygen content in water is decreased. Aquatic life is killed. The meat industry
creates three times as much organic waste as all other U.S. industries combined.
Who needs a reality based television show to bring fear factors into our homes? Eating a meat
based diet is a very real and an everyday source of sufficient fear for those who choose such a
diet. It has been 9 years since I made the conscious decision to follow a vegetarian diet.
Going vegetarian has not only improved my health, but I now feel it was the best ethical and
spiritual decision of my life. I encourage other Unitarian Universalists to consider the benefits
of following a vegetarian diet. Can we really respect the interdependent web of existence of
which we are all a part and not be vegetarian?
F. Vernon Chandler is a Unitarian Universalist minister, former editor of the Universalist Herald
and a member-at-large of the UFETA (Unitarian Universalists for the Ethical Treatment of
Animals) Board of Trustees. The above article appeared on the UFETA website and is
reprinted in the Herald with permission of the author.
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