Vegans and vegetarians think eating animals is cruel but aren't they still torturing plant life?

Question

As for all you vegans out there, what is up with this you shouldn't torture living creatures and eat them...Hello, plants are living things! Don't you think they have emotions and feel pain too!? Aren't you torturing that plant or tree when you pick it's fruit!? You care about all the little animals but have no problem torturing the living plant life.

Thank you Grammanl! You just served as a perfect example of my point. All those quotes about living animals but who cares about the living plant life!? Everything you wrote just proved my point.

Less consciousness? ROTFL That's like being less pregnant. Either it's conscious or it's not!

Answer 1

Plants are of lower consciousness and lower on the food chain than animals are. How come people have so many more 'chewing' teeth than canine teeth?

The human digestive tract is very long [approx. 30 ft ] as is a cow's. Plant-eating animals have long digestive tracts to accomodate the bulk and fiber of plants. Etc,etc,etc,etc.

If you are REALLY interested in why people become vegetarians and not just looking for something else to rag on, read the articles from the sites listed in sources, below, so that you will at least sound more educated about this topic.

Oh, and here are a few quotes from some famous vegetarians, some of whom you may recognize. [ I hope ]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"I have from an early age abjured the use of meat, and the time will come when men such as I look upon the murder of animals as they now look upon the murder of men." -- Leonardo da Vinci
"Teaching a child not to step on a caterpillar is as valuable to the child, as it is to the caterpillar." -- Bradley Miller

"Nothing will benefit human health and increase chances for survival of life on earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet." -- Albert Einstein

"But for the sake of some little mouthful of flesh, we deprive a soul of the sun and light and of that proportion of life and time it had been born into the world to enjoy." -- Plutarch

"While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we ever expect ideal conditions on earth." -- George Bernard Shaw

"Men dig their graves with their own teeth and die by those fated instruments more than the weapons of their enemies. " -- Thomas Moffett

"You put a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, I'll buy you a new car." -- Harvey Diamond

"Think of the fierce energy concentrated in an acorn! You bury it in the ground, and it explodes into an oak! Bury a sheep, and nothing happens but decay." -- George Bernard Shaw

"You have just dined, and however scrupulously the slaughterhouse is concealed in the graceful distance of miles, there is complicity." -- Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties... The lower animals, like man, manifestly feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery." -- Charles Darwin

"Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you anymore." -- Franz Kafka

"When it comes to having a central nervous system, and the ability to feel pain, hunger, and thirst, a rat is a pig is a dog is a boy." -- Ingrid Newkirk

"If experiments on animals were abandoned on grounds of compassion, mankind would have made a fundamental advance." -- Richard Wagner

"For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love." -- Pythagoras

"It were much better that a sentient being should never have existed, than that it should have existed only to endure unmitigated misery." -- Percy Bysshe Shelley

"What I think about vivisection is that if people admit that they have the right to take or endanger the life of living beings for the benefit of many, there will be no limit for their cruelty." -- Leo Tolstoy

"I said in mine heart concerning the estate of the sons of men, that God might manifest them, and that they might see that they themselves are beasts. For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them: as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no preeminence above a beast: for all is vanity." -- Ecclesiastes

"Not to hurt our humble brethren is our first duty to them, but to stop there is not enough." -- St. Francis of Assisi

"I will not eat anything that walks, runs, skips, hops or crawls. God knows that I've crawled on occasion, and I'm glad that no one ate me." -- Alex Poulos



Reply to Turtle-----

Please read my first sentence again. Anything living has life force, of course, so killing anything, animal or plant, causes death. Doesn't it make sense that if a plant can't think and feel on as high a level as animals, it is less painful to eat plants rather than animals since it is not possible for humans to eat nothing? It's simple! Plants have less consciousness than animals. One of my teachers explained it this way- Humans think and feel and express [hopefully], animals feel pain like humans do, but are not as conscious as humans. Plants' consciousness is similar to being in a sleep state. So, sorry, I DID address your question.

Picking a head of broccoli hurts a lot less than brutally killing an animal, doesn't it? Out of respect for all life -plant & animal, not overeating is another way to lessen pain.

You really need to read what people are saying to you. Who ever said that vegetarians are not aware that plants are alive? Come on!!!!!!

Answer 2

I'm afraid that you've been misled--veganism is not about preserving all life for the sake of preserving it, but rather, to avoid being the cause of suffering or death for beings that are capable of having a subjective experience of pain. Plants may be able to "feel"--that is, to have their cells respond to stimuli, such as growing from water or the sun's light waves--but, unlike many animals, they cannot experience that feeling--they are not aware that anything is happening to them; there is no emotion; there is no consciousness; there is no realization that they are in captivity or in the wild; and there is no choice to behave, only involuntary, reactive behaviour, and even then, only behaviours at the most base level of existence: consuming nutrients and growth.

I hope that I've helped to alleviate your confusion.

http://www.veganoutreach.org/whyvegan/
http://www.veganoutreach.org/advocacy/beyond.html
http://www.veganhealth.org

Answer 3

I hate the idiots who bring this up. Yes, plants are living things, but when we "kill' plants, they don't feel pain. In order to feel pain, you need to have a nervous system and a brain, which plants don't. Animals, however, do have these things, and they can suffer and feel pain just like humans can.

Answer 4

Good point, but that is why I'm a vegan. I hate plants! I want to make them feel pain. I want to rip apples from their branches and end their life, just to hear the satisfying crunch of their sweet juicy corpse between my teeth.

Answer 5

Ya we do killl and eat them but at least thats less than the thing that non veg people take the lives of both Plants and animals.

Answer 6

If you want to minimize the possibility of causing plants pain, you need to eat as low on the food chain as possible. Eating soy beans directly murders fewer soy beans than processing a much larger amount through cows or pigs.

Answer 7

Plants have a more evolved central nervous system than any animal has, including humans. They can feel pain and fear and have been tested to their response to both talking and music.

If vegans really wanted to do some good, they'd swear off eating any plant life, but that would mean they'd have to live on vitamins alone...LOL

Answer 8

Plants lack Central Nervous Systems, thus rendering them incapable of feeling any emotion, or pain.

Answer 9

Back in the 70's, when vegetarianism really started to take hold (I fell into for a while, but don't all immature teens?) I saw a show on tv that proved and showed that plants do feel pain.

All I know is that the bible says it is okay to eat meat. We were given canine teeth, meat eating teeth and we have taste buds for meat.

Answer 10

You probably eat both animals and plants- do YOU care about either of them?