Slaughterhouse vs. strawberry harvest: Can plants feel pain?

[Haniska]

Sometimes when I eat potatoes I feel bad for killing them. I also feel this way towards sprouts (some part of me finds them adorable).
This is part of the reason why I was once a fruitarian, but recently I decided that plants have no purpose to feel pain and therefore do not. If they cannot run, why would God be so cruel to make them feel pain for no reason?
It is probably a very silly thing; I actually sometimes have similar feelings when I eat "alternative" foods such as soy milk and soy icecream. Oh, and once when I was a fruitarian (I wasn't a pure fruitarian, I also ate seeds) I got some bean curd from the chinese place and felt guilty for the lusty way I craved the protein. THAT might have been symptoms of an eating disorder but anyway:

Has anyone experienced these feelings with these foods or other foods?

[Korn]

Hi, thank you for being willing to not post the same message several places. Maybe you could delete the copy of the post above from the Raw Food-thread?
:)

[Freckles]

OMG. I love Tigerlily's avatar!! :D

Anyway, I would have to agree with the assumption that plants do not feel pain. They simply don't seem to have the physicality for it. Or the evolutionary necessity of it. Of course, I do believe that plant lives are no less valuable or fruitful(lol) than ours: I harbor no delusions of grandeur that would allow me to assign such value to the lives of other beings... but I really do not see the harm in harvesting these beings for nutritive purposes ... when it seemingly does not cause physical pain or, presumably, what we would consider sadness. It does sometimes depress me that no matter WHAT I do ... I'm always going to be harming something, somehow ... I feel guilty for idling my car, taking long showers/etc - and rightfully so. It seems that humans are such destructive forces - so willing to extinguish life for convenience. And I'm one of them... -sigh-

[insubordination]

Sorry if this is mentioned on previous pages. My comeback to 'but plants feel too' is:

I want to cause the least possible harm to stay alive so it is better to eat plants directly than eat animals who have eaten plans throughout their lives.

It's much better than getting into an argument about whether plants feel.

[Tigerlily]

OMG. I love Tigerlily's avatar!! :D


Thanks. :)

[Cairidh]

Sometimes when I eat potatoes I feel bad for killing them. I also feel this way towards sprouts (some part of me finds them adorable).
This is part of the reason why I was once a fruitarian, but recently I decided that plants have no purpose to feel pain and therefore do not. If they cannot run, why would God be so cruel to make them feel pain for no reason?
It is probably a very silly thing; I actually sometimes have similar feelings when I eat "alternative" foods such as soy milk and soy icecream. Oh, and once when I was a fruitarian (I wasn't a pure fruitarian, I also ate seeds) I got some bean curd from the chinese place and felt guilty for the lusty way I craved the protein. THAT might have been symptoms of an eating disorder but anyway:

Has anyone experienced these feelings with these foods or other foods?

Yes :(
but why were you guilty about eating beancurd when you ate seeds? Beans/seeds/same thing.
How long were you fruitarian?

[Korn]

I don't get it. Is eating seeds/grains/beans wrong in your opinion because of the way they are grown, which may include the risk of harming/killing ie. mice during the modern harvest process? If you walk in a forest, you may kill insects too, they may hide beneath a leave... are you ever feeling 'guilty' if you have been guilty of talking a walk? If you are against eating grains or seeds grown in a modern way, and if this bothers you, why not grow your own grains/seeds?

[Cairidh]

Are you talking to me? It's none of my business what other people eat, but I won't eat grains etc because millions of fieldmice, voles, rabbits, frogs, ground nesting birds, their chicks, their eggs are massacred when the grains are harvested. It's not a modern thing, before the combine harvester was invented, field workers used to go around with pitchforks and spades deliberately killing the animals. Now they get chewed up by the machines, but I don't think that makes it ok.
I don't want to discuss this, as if I do, I will be accused of "attacking" vegans/veganism.

[insubordination]

Hmmm, never thought about that before. I'm never going to say a Fruitarian diet or raw diet (or whatever) is wild or wacky because most people think my vegan diet is crazy. My (sensible) brother once called me an extremist.

[harpy]

I think it's a legitimate concern that animals get killed when grains and (I suppose) other plant crops are cultivated and harvested.

Growing one's own stuff and harvesting it carefully would probably be the most logical response to that problem -but I can't see myself doing it any time soon unfortunately. In the meantime one reason I try to choose organic stuff is that I believe organic growers cause a bit less damage to the environment, including the animals that are hanging around in the vicinity of the crops.

[Korn]

Are you talking to me? I know that it does upset you to 'kill plants', but no, I wasn't talking to you - the question was for Haniska.

[Haniska]

Yes :(
but why were you guilty about eating beancurd when you ate seeds? Beans/seeds/same thing.
How long were you fruitarian?

Hi Cairidh,

I actually felt guilty for the seeds I ate also (mostly wheat and occasionly tree nuts; wouldn't pull up peanuts to eat them). I wasn't really aware at the time of mice being killed; but I felt guilty because I knew the entire plant was pulled up. I still ate seeds because it was less expensive than going all the way, and I saw grains as being closer to the ideal than beans; partly because of the cuteness factor of sprouts that I mentioned before. No that doesn't make sense still but that was my reasoning. There was also the fact that I was never a big bean eater and the fruitarian movement was all about how anything but fruit was excessive protein.

As for the reason I felt guilty with the bean curd: It seemed to awaken in me a lust that I likened to a lust for animal foods, particularly chicken, and at the time I didn't like that. I do think that was partially a purity thing I was having at the time. Now I don't mind being lustful towards my food:D
(of course I am trying to stay my addictions but that is another thread).

I think that I was "fruitarian" for at least 9 months and maybe 2 yrs (long time ago) which converted into a semi-raw food diet. This was actually a diet that I had read about and referred to as the "Jesus diet" which involved eating plants that were not killed by the eating. That is to say things that grew above ground. I had some days that I was 100% on the diet but I still ate grains as I was still poor.

[Haniska]

I don't get it. Is eating seeds/grains/beans wrong in your opinion because of the way they are grown, which may include the risk of harming/killing ie. mice during the modern harvest process? If you walk in a forest, you may kill insects too, they may hide beneath a leave... are you ever feeling 'guilty' if you have been guilty of talking a walk? If you are against eating grains or seeds grown in a modern way, and if this bothers you, why not grow your own grains/seeds?

I actually used to have, and may occasionally still have guilty feelings when I walk in the woods or even on the grass. However, I no longer let these feelings get the best of me. I decided that if being compassionate seperated me that much from nature then I needed to subdue myself. As far as that being right or wrong I take no stand.:cool:

[Haniska]

[quote=Cairidh]Yes :( quote]

Cairidh,

What foods make you feel guilty and why? Do you eat them anyway?

[indianvegan]

Water powered energy also may kill fish and destroy ecosystems.

Tigerlily, I agree with you. It is tough to stop ourselves in modern living. How can one can know about the source of production of electricity ?

Jain saints do not use any kind of electricity at all because of the reason of Ahimsa.:)

Manish Jain

[Tigerlily]

That's my point, if one wants to live in society, it's pretty much impossible to avoid everything which may or may not harm animals. :)

[indianvegan]

As far as, Plants life is concerned, I would like to share here, religious views :

Jainism---

Plants life is concerned sacred..so one should try to protect or minimise use of them...so many Jains do not eat Vegetables on certain days in a month...some keep fasting once/twice a month...because of fasting...generally on fasting days, people escape many kinds of violence..some do fasting without water even...to them Plants have touch sense...they feel touch of foreign body. On the same ground, eating of sprouts is conisdered bad, many followers do not eat sprouts...similarly there are number of Jains who are not eating roots vegetables ( me too ) for the reaason that they contain countless microorganism...there is so importance given to save these micro organism..same advice has been given for "water" too..all Jain saints use boiled water, they do not boil themselves, they visit to various residents/home to beg boiled water... they use this boiled water for certain hours only... and it is believe that, after few hours of boiling new germs comes up in that boiled water...so take another round and bring fresh batch of boiled water.....even they do not use any Vehicle...so no question of pollution/killings...they do not construct any home for themselves....they do not wear shoes even to save visible/invisible insects on roads...they do not keep money with them...they are very much on fastings...inspite all these much importance to Ahimsa and micro organism, Jain Saints are using Animal Milk. There are around 10000-15000 Jain saints in billions of Indian population.

Apart from Animal Milk, their life is most compassionate. One can hats off for them.

Manish Jain

[Cairidh]

Cairidh,

What foods make you feel guilty and why? Do you eat them anyway?

When I was 4 I started helping my Grandpa in the garden. The first thing he let me do was plant seeds and bulbs. And then I'd water them and nurture them. So far so good. But then when they grew into vegetables, he wanted me to me pull them up!!!!!!!!! And I couldn't. No way. So then I knew that vegetables were dead plants, and when I was offered them at dinner time I was horrified and wouldn't eat them. I'd pull my face in horror at the vegetables and then sit and eat a plate of mince and mash because I didn't know that mince is a cow (I'm not very bright!) and mash is a plant.

I wanted to eat raw veg because I was constantly being told they were healthy but I couldn't. People at my school used to take raw carrots in their packed lunch boxes, and it upset me to watch them eating them. On the school field at playtime I used to find plants that had been completely uprooted and I'd be very upset, and smuggle them up my jumper into the toilets and give them water and wrap them in paper towels. Then usually one of the evil dinner ladies would find me, and scream and shout at me, and throw the plant in the bin.

I stopped trying to help my Grandpa in the garden because he'd always want me to either pull up vegetables, or do the weeding (arghhh! no!), or the digging, which I couldn't do because of chopping the worms. As for sprouts, I can't be doing with them at all. Germinate them and start them growing and nurture them for a week and then eat them. No, I can't. I keep trying to, I've even bought an automatic sprouter, but I can't. And I can't harvest herbs.

Killing animals upsets me, obviously, but trying not to do so, is an intellectual decision I make.
Trying not to kill plants isn't an intellectual thing, it's purely emotional. It upsets me.

When I was 10 I realised meat is dead animals so I stopped eating it. When I was 12 I found out whats wrong with milk and eggs so stopped eating them. I started eating vegetable burgers/fingers/grills etc because I figured had to eat *something* and vegetables were less harmful than the alternatives, and the burgers etc didn't look like dead plants, so unless I thought about it, I wasn't aware of what I was eating, so it didn't upset me. But I still couldnt eat veg that looked like veg.

When I was 13 I read about the harvesting of grains killing fieldmice etc so stopped eating grains. I had to eat something, and I told myself if I was going to eat potatoes I might as well eat other veg, so I started eating vegetables - plain veg - and I found if I ate them every day it upset me less/anaesethised me to it.
Then I realised soya, beans, lentils and seeds are probably the same as grains where fieldmice are concerned....so I stopped eating them. And realised that really the only thing you can eat without killing something is fruit.

So I ate just fruit. I could have eaten nuts and the fruit-seeds, I didn't think there was anything wrong with this. But I didn't. I scooped out the seeds from tomatoes and cucumber and sucked, not chewed, berries so the seeds would leave my body in tact.I knew this wasn't logical or rational - I didn't think there was anything wrong with eating plant seeds, they were never intended to ALL grow into plants - it's like a male humans seeds. They're not a proper living thing, they're just seeds. But I didn't like to eat them.This was quite different from me being upset about eating plants however.

When I was little my mum was always wanting me to send my teddy bears to orphans in Romania - and I couldn't do it because I felt sorry for the teddy bears being sent into those awful conditions. I knew this was ridiculous - teddy bears aren't alive, can't see their surroundings, don't have a clue what their living conditions are, can't think, can't feel. I knew all this. But it still upset me and I still felt sorry for them so I couldn't send them to Romania. And it was the same thing with eating seeds, even though I knew they weren't alive. This didn't extend to grains however as cereals are a much lower form of life than green plants and I didn't mind killing them, or their seeds.

Anyway after 6 months on just fruit I had to start eating other food again, and found I was now completely unable to tolerate cooked food which made me very ill (had no affect on me before!!!!!!!!!) So now I have to be 100% raw.

Which means I have to eat veg and I even eat beansprouts sometimes (shop bought, can't sprout them myself).However I still go days where I eat just fruit, or just fruit and nuts, until I get weak or tearful (blood sugar levels up the chute) and have to eat veg.And I never feel healthy, hence I posted on here "what should one eat?" because I really don't know :(

Now I know about freeganism I wish I'd done that instead. But I'm not sure if you can be a healthy raw vegan freegan.....??? I'm also too wimpy and too proud to go dumpster diving!

[Cairidh]

As far as, Plants life is concerned, I would like to share here, religious views :

Jainism---


I was very relieved when I found out about Jainism. I couldn't be *that* mad, there was a whole religion who felt the same as me!

I'm not as bad/good as the Jains though - I have no problem killing bacteria. In fact I relish it.
I'd probably feel differently if I could see them and if I knew anything about them, ie if I found out how advanced they are. At the moment I'm happily deluding myself they are barely alive. Ignorance is bliss.

Also Jains believe wood and metal feel pain - I totally disagree with this. Wood is dead. It can't feel pain any more than a dead human body. And I don't believe metal was ever alive.
I respect other peoples opinions on this however. I have never studied metal, or its pain threshold, so what do I know?

[Geoff]

Fruit is not always cruelty free:
'The IUCN status of the spectacled flying fox (Pteropus conspicillatus) is presently being reviewed, as there is abundant evidence that there has been a steep decline in their numbers over the past 30 or so years. Much of the reason for this decline stems from a traditional hatred of flying foxes, particularly by fruit farmers who often go to great lengths to persecute these animals. Spectacled flying foxes are largely restricted to the Wet Tropics of Queensland, north of Cardwell/Mission Beach. In the Cairns district alone at least 6 major flying fox camps have been obliterated by burning, gassing and explosives over the past 30 years. Flying fox camps near Ingham and Innisfail have been similarly treated. Despite their listing as protected fauna, shooting, electrocution, and lately, poisoning are being used by farmers to control animals raiding exotic fruit orchards (lychees, rambutans and even bananas). Queensland farmers are able to obtain a Damage Mitigation Permit from Queensland National Parks, but rarely if ever abide by the conditions, and are never prosecuted for breaching them.'

[Cairidh]

Fruit is not always cruelty free:


Thanks for the quote! blimey.

[Geoff]

The quote is from: http://www.austrop.org.au/index.html
There are some lovely pics under 'Flying Fox Issues'

[Cairidh]

I don't think I want to see the pics, they'll put me off fruit and I'll starve to death.

[Cairidh]

Maybe I could pay someone to go dumpster diving for me??

[indianvegan]

Cairidh, there few human beings (they are in Jain community) in India, who can not see cutting of vegetables/fruits. It is not a joke but truth. You will wonder, there is a different word used by sensible Jain women in place of "cutting" ( in hindi we say " katna ") instead of saying cutting of vegetable they say repairing of vegetable ( repairing here means " Sudharna " ). Only intention behind it is we should not even use cruel word for living things.

As far as Wood/Metal/Other Mineral Ores are concerned, if you go in to root of them, you will find Plants/trees..Mines..and you know how important is to save them. These too have touch sense. ---Jainism.


Manish Jain