What about plants?

[ryansmithxvx]

I highly recommend this article from Gary Francione's blog. It's a few months old, but I just came across it:

A Frequently Asked Question: What About Plants

Comments

[tiredshaw]

You should post this in vegandebate, there are some people there that are unclear as to whether or not plants are sentient

[ryansmithxvx]

i'm not a member of it, and being one would be a waste of my time, since i'm almost never online anymore, but if you want to, i highly encourage you to (or anyone)

[sagcat]

I think if someone is going to stick their neck out on a philosophical issue, then they damn well better be able to answer the question, "what about plants?" And your answer had better have some though behind it. Cause if you just say you don't eat meat because it was "alive," then you leave yourself open to this retort. If you can't give a rational line of demarcation between the life of a cow and the life of a carrot, then you'll be disregarded as an idiot.

And where do fish fit on this continuum? What about endangered plants vs. plentiful animals? What about organic vs. pesticides? What about local vs. flown in from Chile? Get your shit together and think about these things or you'll be ignored faster than the log cabin republicans.

[roboticminotaur]

I agree with you that it's best to have a coherently thought out position on one's ethical views. But I also want to point out that veg*ns are unfairly saddled with way more responsibility here than omnis. A veg*n who can't properly articulate why she eats plants but not cows is seen as an idiot. But an omni who can't properly articulate why it's okay to eat cows (or plants) but not babies is very much the norm, not seen as an idiot. In fact it's difficult to fully, carefully and rationally articulate these things. It's the sort of things ethicists do for their career. Veg*ns are expected to be great ethicists, and if they're not then they're hypocritical idiots. No such expectations are levelled against omnis. So while we should try maintain a coherent ethical position, we should also rebel against the idea that veg*ns and veg*ns alone need to have the skills of professional philosophers in order to justify their diets.

[sagcat]

I see your point, but I think you're overstating it. I think there's a LOT of people (eg most of the people in this community) who hold out idiots who eat meat as idiots. Such people are routinely held out for ridicule on this community. We generally laugh our tails off at their stupidity. We laugh at their inability to even *have* an ethic, for they don't think about it.

And i ask people all the time to justify their diets. I think it's fun watching people try to explain why they eat chickens or why they feed it to their children. For many people, it might be the first time they've ever been challenged as such, and for some of them it might be the first step toward giving it up.

Usually, people hear that a veg*n is in their midst and they immediately start making excuses as to why they eat animals. Like they know they shouldn't, so they rationalize their own behavior. At least the people I'm hanging out with do this. YMMV.

[turnyourback]

i can't believe people actually make this argument.

[no_daybutoday]

My thoughts: It takes a tree a hell of a lot longer to grow and mature than it takes tomatoes, lettuce, and apples. The fruits and vegetables we consume are easily replenishable. Also, the survival of trees is in our best interest since we use their oxygen, wood, ability to block sound pollution, etc. So while it's an argument that has to be made, it isn't really fair to compare trees to vegetables.

[savagefreedom]

I really find myself disagreeing with this article as a whole, at least in his assertion that we should hold no moral obligations toward trees, or in general, anything we deem to be non-sentient. I think we should hold moral obligations to pretty much everything that we have the power adn especially desire to commodify and destroy. Especially, as no_daybutoday said, since the survival of trees is in our best interest. Francione did mention that we should use resources wisely, but the rest of the language he uses is pretty much concurrent with the mindset of the people who DO wantonly destroy trees, with the exception of the moral obligation to the creatures that live in and around the trees. Plenty of people, plenty today even, do not even regard cows as sentient, as incredible as that may seem. They are a commodity to many, "cattle," just like a great number of insects are put under the blanket term "pests" and thus deemed worthy of extermination. I also just don't feel his argument about what makes something sentient is the best way of going