this post was submitted on 22 Jan 2024
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What now, vegans?
I'm vegan and this is so obviously not an issue ethically. Never mind that vastly more plants need to be harvested to feed livestock, this is a chemical response that is in no way similar to the pain an animal feels.
Go cut your lawn and then kill baby cow and try to tell me it's the same.
Interesting, as explained in the article the smell (VOC) we would experience of a newly cut lawn would technically be the cries of the plants. So other plants see it as a warning and they bolster their defenses. Ain't that no different from a baby cow being killed slowly probably through a predator. It would communicate through cries. Making similar animals interpret this as a warning perhaps making them react by running away or fighting back. Maybe we don't see the VOC as act of cry because we simply don't have any idea how to process it, since we're not plants. Though we could argue that plants does not have consciousness as we're aware of while animals do.
Edit: anyways not trying to question your choice of veganism, I think it's a noble choice. I just wanted to share my thought on that statement you mentioned.
I'm talking about the actual morality of it, nevermind the sustainability and health difference.
You're likely not being honest if you think you'd feel the same killing a baby a cow as you would cutting the grass.
Plants don't have a brain to process information, they are releasing these chemicals as an innate response. If you've ever spent time around cows or pigs you'd know there's little difference between their ability to feel and think from a dog.
All I've learned from this comment is that "you don't know what you don't know" and you're mad that others are being open-minded to things that are unknowns.
You can't factually assert animals and plants are different but "they just are" despite the answer being beyond the horizon of current science.
If you had said, "the lack of a brain as we understand it," maybe. But you are too certain about unknowable things for me to follow your reasoning.