I got banned from a vegan group once because I responded to a person talking about how “non-vegans must be sociopaths to not care about all the suffering of animals as they scream in pain” or something like that. I responded with a link to a study that plants do in fact scream when being injured. We just can’t hear it. Apparently they didn’t like that, lol.
Edit to add: I didn’t just respond with a link. But something like “As much as I appreciate veganism I am not sure what to tell you. Because if avoiding screaming and suffering in your food source is the reason you became vegan I do have some bad news <link>”
Plants do not have a central nervous system to process pain and even if they did “feel pain” you’re still eating more of them by eating animal products…
Fair enough. Turns out while every single news article reporting on the plant scream study talks about it as “pain”, the scientists themselves made no such claims. Merely calling it “stress” in plants.
Thank you for giving me a reasonable response that made me look into it further and educated me - the way I feel like would have been beneficial initially instead of what actually happened in that vegan group.
you’re still eating more of them by eating animal products…
not necessarily. we mostly feed livestock parts of plants we don’t or can’t eat. so while spinach is human-edible, the spinach fed to chickens is not handled in a way that keeps it safe for human consumption. by feeding it to livestock, we are conserving resources.
