Anti-Veg. Attacks

Even people who realize it's rude to comment on what other people choose to eat seem to think it's okay to give a child who has made the decision to not eat meat a hard time. my daugher is 10 and went out to eat with a friend at a japanese place where they cook at the table. She ordered vegetables and they gave her a hard time about not eating meat. A couple of weeks later the same "friend" told her she knew why she is so skinny- because she's a veg.

The kid was skinny when she ate meat too!!! It is so irritating that people have this need to pick on others to make themselves feel okay.

 

plants have nervous systems and do respond to external stimuli. which means they probably feel pain when wounded. how can you or i say that plants don't feel pain? we can't say that for sure unless of course you've been in that same position yourself.

 

plants do not have nervous systems. they do not have brains and can't perceive pain. Plants however have very complex and not well understood defense mechanisms. Plants have sensations but do not have the organs necessary to perceive. The reactions to different stimuli are automatic. The plant does not know what it is doing, it is just doing what it has evolved to do because it is adaptive.

 

grrr... i hate the whole argument on this..plants do not feel pain, they have no nerves TO feel pain.

 

I've been hearing that argument for like four years, and still have no idea wtf it's all about. The inherent 'logic' behind it y'know. My father mentioned it in the early days [as a curiosity thing] and I just explained plants don't feel pain, but still don't understand why omnis bring it up to debate/attack veg*anism.

The fact plants might feel pain (which they don't) does not negate the fact that animals quite obviously do. Fewer plants have to die to feed a veg than an omni [as you don't need to feed the animals that omnis eat], so it would still be reducing the suffering. And really the omni by their nature doesn't give that much of a shit about animal suffering (otherwise you would eat them - yeah it's that simple), so how can they seriously claim to care about the welfare of non-sentient organisms?

So um yeah seriously, I have no fucking idea what that's all about ... does anyone know?

 

Reminds me of that song by Tom Paxton - "Please, don't slay that potato". :lol:

My answer is basically the same as yours, sage. As far as we can tell, plants do not feel/perceive pain. However, I recognize the possibility that they might be on a level that I'm just not able to see. Whatever the case is, though, I still have to depend on plants for my nutrition whether I eat meat or not. So I figure I'm *minimizing* the suffering that has to occur for me to eat, either way.

 

Ah I see
Thanks for the insight