Many people, including many meat eaters, agree that there are many thoroughly documented abusive, inhumane, and environmentally unsustainable practices in industrial meat farming, such as mistreatment of animals, keeping them in extremely tight spaces, killing them in ways that prolong suffering, and destroying forests to make more room for farmlands.
If you are a meat eater, do you believe that reducing but not eliminating meat consumption for food would be a more ethical choice than eating meat without worrying about the details of how it was produced? For example, if someone eats meat four or five days a week, do you think it is more ethical for them to reduce that to two or three days if they find out that their main meat supplier, such as their local supermarket, buys from industrial farms?
I would suggest that you first go to an industrial farm, and see for yourself. Do not take the word of those who engage in propaganda, who are often shills for competing businesses. Those businesses have been bullied by animal activists for decades and are following the laws that were created. I have a few chickens for pets and two sister chicken pairs, stay close to each other, even with room to roam.
Domestic food animals have it easy, compared to having to fend for themselves in the wild. Have you even seen a pack of wolves eat a cow while still alive? The same people who complain about beef, would accused that farmer of animal cruelty for not building a pen and shelter to protect their cows. In those pens, where they are protected, they have square meals and fresh water every day, safe from the wolves and mountain lions. Their natural contract is to be pampered until they are ready to help humans with food. Each generation does not fear humans. If food animals feared us, they would not be easy to raise and this could become cruel.
Domestic food animals are not the same as dogs and cats; domestic pets. The higher pet animals get full VIP treatment and are not to be eaten, since that is not their natural contract with humans. They are helpers. Food animals are not animals who dwell in the future, fearing their own death. Human projection is not the same as how a food animal feels. They live in the moment and enjoy their days, safe and fed.
I remember a study where scientists wired plants to electric sensors, and then pulled off leaves. There is an electrical spike; plant awareness and reaction. When you boil or eat fresh broccoli, maybe you can wire it up, to see its cries, as you boil or maw the life out of it.
Some plants have obvious sensory abilities, such as the
Venus flytrap and its incredible traps that can close in about half a second. Similarly, the
sensitive plant rapidly collapses its leaves in response to touch, an adaptation that might serve to startle away potential
herbivores. While these plants visibly display a clear sensory capacity, recent research has shown that other plants are able to perceive and respond to mechanical stimuli at a cellular level.
Arabidopsis (a mustard plant commonly used in scientific studies) sends out electrical signals from leaf to leaf when it is being eaten by
caterpillars or
aphids, signals to ramp up its chemical defenses against herbivory. While this remarkable response is initiated by physical damage, the electrical warning signal is not equivalent to a pain signal, and we should not anthropomorphize an injured plant as a plant in pain.
Do Plants Feel Pain?
We are told not to anthropomorphize plants, but only animals, since the plants do not have audio output. All they have is electrical output, without any output device for our humans to hear. Plants need a blue tooth speaker to help their voice be heard.
My guess is plants have to stay quiet to pain, since noise would give them away in terms of their position. They are stuck in the ground and cannot escape. Cries of pain would draw herbivores animals to eat them and their neighbors. The best they can do is stay silent, hoping the animals will pass by or not totally eat them. The silent life of plants.
Maybe someone could amplify a plants electric reaction signals, with a computer and then a blue tooth speaker, and let the vegetarians hear; morphed sounds, so they can better anthropomorphize the silent world of plants. We are allowed to project human traits onto food animals whose brain are wired differently, since they have an output device. This output device allows them to call for help among moving critters. But the plants who are equally important as food, live in a silent world, just to survive.
Some people play music for their plants, since plants can hear; their purr with an electrical reaction, that makes them grow better. But they are mute and silent. We never hear the purr, but see the results of a happy plant.
Some people will not kill bugs, due to anthropomorphizing; empathize being inside their shell. Not all bugs are quiet. Let us give plants a voice too. This will be like the transgender push, where we add something not in their DNA, so they can better express themselves, for us to hear.
Let me add one more thing. Grain plants, good for bread, etc., use the mature seeds of dying plants. This is interesting, in that this behavior, needed for civilization; grain stockpiles, crested the least harm to the silent plants. This behavior would be encouraged by the plants, to help spread their seeds and care for them; contract between plants and humans.
