Why do vegans eat plants?

Question

Plants also have feelings and are exploited. So why do vegans only consider animal feelings?

Trees are living creatures as well.

Answer 1

Yup..they have no brains nor nervous system but they are still living things...

Answer 2

Nice try.  Do you think you're the first person to trot out the "plant are people, too" argument?

Plants don't have the neurological structures to sense pain, so they cannot suffer.  Plus, they are the food nature provides for us.  ALL humans, not just vegans, eat plants because they're an essential part of our diet (unlike meat, which is not necessary at all.)

Answer 3

animals that are shot in the head don't suffer......the nervous system is destroyed instantly......

so vegans think thats Okay right?  since you all are basing you invalid arguement on the whole nervous system c**p...

you cut a chickens head off and it won't feel........so stop making excuses for trying to be different.

animals die and suffer regardless.  Its called life, maybe you guys should retake biology to see what its really about.

So animals aren't food nature provides for us?  what are they here for them? our amusement? to hang out with?  

Animals aren't offended by eating each other, and like someone said, they too are intelligent beings... your words not mine.

Answer 4

ok I will take this challange myself

What is Left to eat no fruits, no vegetables No meat.

Water! or does that have feelings to if so the earth does also and we need to get off this planet and walk on air or float on top of clouds made of water?

Eat or No Eat? how do I keep from getting hungary?

plants are good for you and contain nutrition. The plant is the only alternative to getting healthy. I guess if not let me know I like the idea of nutrition without calories.

Answer 5

Meat eaters eat plants too.

Besides, plants don't feel pain, they don't suffer. Animals may be sentient but plants are not.

Answer 6

This has been brought up so many times.

How about the concept of "Most Good, Least Harm" to give you an idea.

For those who eat meat they are not only responsible for those lives of the animals but also for the much more substantial amounts of plants the animal has to eat to provide just one pound of meat.

And I'm betting that even by asking the question you are exposing yourself to hypocrisy since it's likely you eat at least some plants. Even bread started off as wheat.

However, plants produce their fruits and offer them up as a symbiotic relationship to get their seeds spread so we are actually doing them a favor. If they have feelings they are grateful.

Not to mention that if anyone is exploited it's us as we tend and are held hostage to huge crops such as the North American corn crops. We've been tamed by Zea Mays.

Answer 7

Because plants are actually good for us! Any plus plants aren't intellligent beings like humans and animals so if they experiece pain they probably don't even realize it.

Answer 8

Well, I personally don't eat trees but I can't speak for all vegans of course.

I eat plants because otherwise I would die.  I will not die from not eating animals.

Answer 9

Because if you didn't eat anything that once was living, you would die.  Even processed foods contain products from living things.

Besides, since when do trees and plants have feelings?  When was the last time you heard your lawn scream in pain when you mowed it?

Answer 10

Plants don't have feelings, have no brain and no nervous system.  Someone needs to retake biology.

Do you honestly know anyone that eats trees??

Answer 11

animal protein is actually harder for our body to digest than protein from plant sources. Plants provide excellent protein that is easy for our bodies to digest. So,

Consider the following justifications for eating plants made by vegans on the Vegan-L email discussion list. Most of these arguments (numbered below and followed by my response) could just as easily have been made by someone trying to justify eating meat.

1) Even vegans have to eat something.

This is verbatim a meat eater's argument--"But what do vegans eat? I don't have time to cook all of my own meals, I could never get enough to eat without eating meat...." Clearly vegans could eat fruits and parts that can be eaten without killing the plant--just like herbivorous animals who most often eat only leaves or parts of the plant that will grow back.

2) Plants lack a central nervous system and it is unlikely for them to feel pain in the way animals or humans do.

Just as Descartes managed to ignore the obvious when he said that animals were unfeeling machines, there is considerable evidence that plants are much more aware than we commonly believe. Using a definition of pain that is based on possession of a nervous system deliberately and arbitrarily excludes plants. Yet plants are clearly aware of when they are being attacked because they mobilize chemical defenses. Just as meat eaters try to deny the fact that animals feel pain, vegans try to deny the fact that plants feel something akin to pain--something that could be used to justify not killing them. If we ever encounter aliens, the chances that they have a nervous system like ours is vanishingly small, but we would nonetheless assume that they feel what we would categorize as pain.

3) Plants have no need to feel pain since they cannot move away from the source of the pain like animals can.

See the previous response--plants clearly do react; if pain is simply a warning tool, some sort of distress signal would still serve a purpose in plants.

4) And even if plants did feel pain, eating meat causes much more suffering than living a vegan lifestyle because animals eat countless plants before humans eat the animals.

This doesn't apply to hunting wild animals who generally don't kill plants (unlike cows who are fed dead soybeans). And what about all of the plants and animals that are disrupted or killed by farming (i.e., the ones that were there before the farmer, the ones that the farmer kills on purpose)? Although veganism probably does decrease plant suffering when compared to eating meat, this doesn't justify killing plants. The question is not whether we should be omnivores or vegans, but whether or not vegans should adopt a more plant-friendly diet.

5) Fruits are designed specifically to be eaten--that is how plants spread their seeds.

Then just eat fruits. Eating potatoes and carrots doesn't spread seeds around and it kills the plant--how can this be justified? What about plants that try to avoid being eaten--ones that are poisonous, taste nasty, or make you infertile (e.g. sheep who eat clover high in phytoestrogens)?

6) Foods like tomatoes, apples, cherries, eggplants, grapes, etc. do not require the killing of the plant. It's more like taking eggs from a chicken.

Given that vegans don't eat eggs because they think it's wrong, this argument makes no sense.

7) If fruits aren't eaten, they quickly wither and die--they are intended to be eaten. The same is not true of animals.

Yes, fruits are intended to be eaten. Some herbivores are also "intended to be eaten." There are carnivorous animals that can only eat other animals. If these carnivores did not eat the old and diseased prey animals, those prey animals would, in fact, "wither and die." Additionally, the whole herd would suffer if the population got too large or dying members were constantly eating food that healthy members could eat.

8) We should be vegans because we can; we should reduce whatever suffering we can.

Should we not then be fruitarians or gatherers because we can? Or are we simply too lazy, just like most people are too lazy to be vegan. We usually don't find that an acceptable excuse! (Of course laziness is certainly not the primary problem--people are constantly bombarded with the idea that they can, should, and must eat dead animals.)

9) We're herbivores. We must eat plants to survive--it is our instinct.

This simply begs the question--meat-eaters justify eating animals by pointing out that humans are omnivores (which we are--see e.g., Humans are Omnivores). Furthermore, humans manage to overcome all sorts of "instincts"--for example, we generally do not copulate in public. Arguments that appeal to "nature" should be met with deep skepticism. Recall that slavery and the subjugation of women and countless indigenous cultures were and are considered a necessary part of the "natural order."

10) Broccoli screams might be pleasure, not pain.

Ditto for animals.

11) It's a rare person--and, I would say, a very strange person--who would flinch upon seeing a carrot pulled from the ground.

First, many people do abhor large-scale agriculture. Second, the fact that our culture is desensitized to violence, especially to something that's been going on for a long, long time is not an argument for anything. Also, people don't want to face up to what they are really doing--just like how most people don't think about where their meat came from.

The above responses show that vegans cannot come up with any truly compelling reasons as to why eating plants is justified in the context of animal rights. Which leads us to the ultimate question...

12) And so what if you cannot totally eliminate any supposed pain that plants may feel. Is that a justification for eating meat? For killing humans, by extension?

We can agree that humans must cause some suffering to exist. Whereas a meat-eater uses this fact to ignore animal suffering, vegans use this fact to ignore plant suffering. But just as inflicting plant suffering does not justify inflicting animal suffering, the fact that we do not inflict animal suffering does not license us to inflict wanton plant suffering. Rather than just dismissing plant suffering as inevitable, vegans should try to reduce that as well.

Answer 12

i'm a vegan because i hate plants.

let them all die.

Answer 13

Kindly cite the scientific study or journal that illustrates that "plants have feelings"

Thank you.