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Quote by: m3talsmith BTW, as far as the argument goes about meat being murder, what about pulling a carrot out of the ground where it has been "living", skinning it alive, chopping it up, alive, and then either boiling it or consuming it in your latest salad? I think that argument is moot since everything on earth that grows is "alive", or it wouldn't grow. |
Plants do not have a central nervous system and do not process pain as animals do. "Pain" is has a self preserving evolutionary purpose for survival. Locamotive animals experience pain so they can move away from the source which is causing or threatening it, which is usually a precursor to death. Plants cannot move away from it, therefore with that and the fact that they do not have a central nervous system, they do not experience pain.
Even if they did experience some pain (which we are not aware of and which has never been conclusively proven), choosing to be a vegetarian is not about eliminating all suffering and death in the world. It is about choosing to cause the least amount of death through one`s actions (i.e. if one has chosen to be a vegetarian out of moral reasons).
So, let`s say for argument's sake that plants do feel pain (which they do not), it would still be more ethical to choose to kill them than animals for food simply because the net total of killing would be less. Raising animals for slaughter entails that more plants would need to be killed as an additional step in the value added of the creation of the flesh for consumption, whereas if plants were consumed directly by their end users, calories would not be wasted in an intermittant step.
Your argument is moot and rests on no science of plants feeling pain.