What about the suffering of people who labor all day for work picking plant food?

Question

My mother started this argument with me! She said, sure plants don't feel pain, but what about all the pain from Mexicans that have to pick plant food, they bruise, suffer, heat strokes, bleeding hands, sore backs, etc. Must of these people are forced to stay all day long in the heat. They SUFFER!

So what do you say to my mother?

Answer 1

Well it's not exactly the same as being bred only to be slaughtered and eaten.
Those people are taken advantage of by their employers who underpay them. Yet it is still their choice to work. And if anything, the fact that we eat plants is helping these people live. On the other hand, when we eat meat, we're helping animals die.
If we go by your mother's argument, then we shouldn't wear clothes, or shoes, because people suffer to make them too...

Answer 2

I assume this is part of an ongoing conversation, where you said eating meat makes you responsible for the suffering of the animals who are being raised in cruel environments. She has a point, being a vegetarian doesn't exempt you from sharing in at least a small amount of suffering. She would also be right if she said that, in a wider sense, vegetarians still affect the lives of animals because vegetable farms take up land where native plants and animals would otherwise be living. We crowd them out of their habitat and when they try to sneak back in, we shoot them or poison them.

You might say:
Watch the movie Fast Food Nation and then ask yourself if you'd rather work picking fruit in a field or work in a meat packing plant.

You could also say:
Migrant farm workers mostly pick fruit, not vegetables. Vegetable farms generally use machines to pick the produce.

You could also say:
Poverty is what makes people willing to do terrible jobs for small amounts of money. By decreasing the total food supply (because a 640-acre cattle ranch can only feed one sixteenth of the people that a 640-acre vegetable farm can feed) cattle ranching makes poverty worse, not better.

You could also say:
Yes mother, you're right. I think we should address this problem by voting for a higher minimum wage and better enforcement of labor laws.

If you want to change your impact, you could shop at local farmers' markets, and ask them if they use migrant farm workers to pick their produce. Or, you could plant your own garden and grow as much of your own food as you can.

Answer 3

but those people can speak up for there rights and they get paid for what they do and to them its just a job and they can always quit if they wanted to any way now days they have machines and tractors that do it for them so they dont have to work to hard
so they work in heat at a meat factory to
but the animals suffer in the heat and through a painful death because there is no humane way to kill an animal for heat they cant give it a shot to make it die because the humanes die and the people that kill animimsl suffer to they have to deal with harder stuff

Answer 4

Humans have a choice. I have worked back breaking labor jobs most of my life. I have worked in the sun till I was so burnt it was ridiculous, then I went back out the next day. That was my choice. I never complained because that is what I had to do at the time to make money. We have the power to change our own reality where as animals do not.

Answer 5

Yes, and they suffer in slaughterhouses, too. If you've never read Gail Eisnitz's "Slaughterhouse," you will see that these places don't just kill animals, they kill people. Migrant women work in chicken slaughterhouses, hooking the chickens' legs into the shackles, constant motion, hours and hours. The lines move so fast, the workers can barely do their jobs properly. They SUFFER, too.

By being vegetarian, I am reducing suffering to the extent I can.

Answer 6

Well to me its just like for people who eat meat. And there isnt nothing wrong with eating some meat.

Answer 7

I'd say you're right! You've shown me that there is no logic at all behind this "reason" to not eat meat, because everything suffers and dies. A lot of these animals would not even be here if we weren't raising them for meat. Now, mention lobbying for better treatment of animals in the slaughtering facilities and you have a point there. I would tell her that she won that debate and then come up with some better reasons to be vegetarian

Answer 8

So what's her point, that you should stop eating plants?

Answer 9

I say, WOW, thanks MOM! Something we never consider and is very true. When veggie heads talk about "exploitation" they don't realize that migrant workers are exploited every day.

And they do suffer ... ill pay, no medical care, cramped quarters, etc., etc.

Answer 10

"Yeah, very funny"