RE: [100% veg*n ] Don't Plants Have Feelings Too?

[Guest guest]

I saw the same kind of articles on a website about the Prius by Toyota. I saw

bad reports on the Internet about the car without any basis in truth put there

because it affected union jobs and union income. At least you can by a Toyota

made on Friday or Monday not worrying if the workers were hung over or thinking

about drinking on the weekend. If union workers keep worrying about their jobs

without regard to ethics and accountability I will stop supporting unions in any

way. Coming from a strong Teamster background and being a hell-raising activist

the unions will have strong opposition from me soon. Did you say something?

“So what, you say?†I should be able to move a few hundred thousand votes

against you. I’ll roll up my sleeves and put up several non-union

websites—polished and clean looking websites with newsletters to drive people

away from your shrinking voter support.

 

 

 

The only “plants†these unions are worried about is the ones they go to with

their hangovers on Monday to earn their union wages. Shame on them!

 

 

 

Don

 

 

 

http://upc-online.org/ethics_questions.html#top)

 

Don't Plants Have Feelings Too?

by United Poultry Concerns

Responding Effectively to 13 Frequently Asked Questions About

Food, Fiber, Farm Animals, and the Ethics of Diet

 

What about plants...

Won't animals overrun the earth?

Farm animals can't survive on their own.

Is confinement so terrible?

Badly treated animals are less productive.

What's the difference? -- they're going to die anyway.

God created animals for us to use.

Aren't humans natural meat-eaters?

There's no such thing as cruelty-free food!

What's wrong with eggs and milk?

What about jobs?

What about human problems?

Forget about ethics.

What about plants? Don't plants have feelings too?

It is very possible that plants have sensitivities that we do not yet

understand. Because plants do not have nervous systems and cannot run away from

predators, it has generally been assumed that they do not experience pain and

suffering. Recent scientific evidence suggests that this assumption may be

incorrect. However, we do know that birds and other nonhuman vertebrates have

well- developed nervous systems and pain receptors the same as humans. Like us,

they show pleasure and pain and they present comparable evidence of fear and

well-being. Animals cry out in pain, they nurse wounded body parts, and they

seek to avoid those who have hurt them in the past.

In order to live, one has to eat. However, when we eat animal products, we

consume many more plants indirectly than if we ate those plants directly,

because the animals we eat are fed huge quantities of grasses, grains, and seeds

to be converted into meat, milk, and eggs. As a vegan (one who eats no animal

products) you cause fewer beings to suffer and die for you.

 

What will we do with all the animals if we stop eating them? Won't they overrun

the earth?

Farm animals will not overrun the earth if we stop eating them because we will

no longer intentionally breed them as we do now. Parent flocks and herds are

deliberately maintained by artificial insemination, genetic selection, bizarre

lighting schedules and other manipulations to force them to produce billions of

offspring each year. This inflated population will fade as people stop eating

animal products. In time, as David Gabbe states in Why Do Vegetarians Eat Like

That?, " farm animals could be left to fend for themselves; some would make out

fine, others would struggle to keep from becoming extinct. But, like all animals

(except humans), they would adjust their numbers in accordance with the

conditions around them. "

In the meantime, we have to remember that we, not they, are responsible for

their predicament. We have an obligation to find ways to ease the transitional

period for these animals.

 

Farm animals have been bred for domestication. Haven't they lost their natural

instincts? They can't survive on their own, can they? If we stop providing for

them, won't they die of starvation and failure to reproduce?

On the one hand we're afraid that farm animals will overrun the earth. On the

other hand we worry that they'll become extinct. Feral chickens, pigs, and other

farm animals ( " feral " refers to domesticated animals who have become

self-sustaining again) successfully resume their natural activities given the

chance: they forage, graze, mate, raise their young, socialize and get along

very well without humans. Farm animals are much more autonomous and resilient

than is commonly supposed. Otherwise, it is better for creatures afflicted with

human- created defects not to be born. People who think it is all right to

imprison animals in genetically-impaired bodies and who then get testy about

their becoming extinct, are indulging in cynicism and sentimentality. Call their

bluff and move on to other issues.

Is confinement so terrible? After all, farmers protect their animals from bad

weather and predators and provide them with food, water and shelter. Isn't that

better than being in the wild?

Slave traders and slaveholders argued that it was better to be a slave in a

" civilized, Christian " society than to be at liberty in a heathen jungle. This

same rationalization is used to justify expropriating and subjugating other

species. Producers tell the public that farm animals prefer " three meals a day "

to a life in the wild. In fact, the " wild " is a human projection onto areas of

the earth and modes of being that are alien and inhospitable to our species. The

wild isn't " wild " to the animals who live there. It is their home. Animals in

wall-to-wall confinement are forced to live in a situation that expresses human

nature, not theirs. If they preferred to be packed together without contact with

the world outside, then we would not need intensive physical confinement

facilities, since they would voluntarily cram together and save us money.

It is illogical to argue that humans protect farm animals from " predators. " We

are their predator. Moreover, by confining them we subject them to many more

nonhuman predators in the form of parasites and other disease organisms than

they would otherwise encounter. By locking them up, we prevent them from using

their natural flight/fight abilities, so that when a predator (such as the

farmer) comes along, they cannot escape. Millions more animals die of heat

stress and other climactic conditions in intensive confinement facilities than

they would in nature. The inability of confined farm animals to exercise their

natural defenses and self-assertion induces pathological stress leading to

immune-system breakdown. Only by twisted standards can apathy and atrophy be

regarded as benefiting an animal.

 

If farm animals are treated as badly as you say, why are they so productive?

Wouldn't they stop producing meat, milk and eggs if they were treated

inhumanely?

Farm animals can be profoundly mistreated and still " produce, " in the same way

that profoundly mistreated humans can be overweight, sexually active and able to

produce offspring. Like humans, farm animals can " adapt, " up to a point, to

living in slums and concentration camp conditions. Is this an argument for slums

and concentration camps? Farm animals do not gain weight, lay eggs, and produce

milk because they are comfortable, content, or well-cared for, but because they

have been manipulated specifically to do these things through genetics,

medications, and management techniques. For example, cage layer producers

artificially stimulate and extend egg production by keeping the lights burning

for 16 or 17 hours a day to force the hen's pituitary gland to secrete increased

quantities of the hormone that activates the ovary.

Animals in production agriculture are slaughtered at extremely young ages,

before disease and death have decimated them as would otherwise happen even with

all the drugs. Even so, many more individual animals suffer and die in intensive

farming, but because the volume of animals being used is so big--in the

billions--the losses are economically negligible, while the volume of flesh,

milk and eggs is abnormally increased.

 

What difference does it make how we treat farm animals-- they're going to die

anyway, aren't they?

The fact that giving farm animals a decent life before killing them can be

seriously questioned represents an important reason to stop raising them for

food. It is not that they are going to die anyway that seems to justify our

mistreatment of them when they are alive--we are all going to die but we do not

generalize the argument--but that we are deliberately going to kill them. There

is a felt inconsistency in valuing a creature so little and yet insisting that

he or she be granted a semblance of tolerable existence prior to execution. So

wanton can our disrespect for our victims become that any churlish sentiment or

behavior seems fit to exercise. It is contemptible to assert that humans have no

responsibility, or that it makes no sense, to enrich the life of a being brought

into the world merely to suffer and die for us. The situation confers greater,

rather than lesser, or no, obligations on us towards those at our mercy.

Yes, but didn't God give humans dominion over all the other animals? If so,

what's wrong with raising them for food and killing them as long as we treat

them humanely while they're still alive?

Some people believe that the Creator gave humanity " dominion " over other life.

Others see the idea of " dominion " as an assertion of human ego in conflict with

true spirituality and common sense. One way or other, a loving God does not

authorize humanity to degrade, insult, and terrorize the other creatures of the

earth, any more than people are authorized to bully, terrorize, and belittle one

another. The idea of a gracious human spirit is expressed in the Christian

Bible, for example, where it says, " O, Jerusalem . . . how often I have longed

to gather your children together as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings "

(Matthew 23:37). Like nature, scripture can be invoked to justify almost

anything one wishes to do. Instead of dwelling on verses that invite us to be

pompous and violent, we should focus on passages and images that instruct us to

be peaceful, participating members of creation.

Most world religions envision a " golden age " when humans lived peaceably on

earth without bloodshed. In Genesis 1:29, God gives to humans " every herb

bearing seed . . . and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding

seed. " God says that, for us, these seeds and fruits " shall be meat. " The

Biblical image of the Garden of Eden is paralleled by the Classical image of the

Golden Age and by ancient Indian depictions of a peaceable kingdom on earth.

 

Aren't humans natural meat-eaters? Aren't we omnivores, designed to eat plants

and animals?

Arguments about the true and ancient diet of humanity are largely speculative.

Opposition to flesh-eating goes back to antiquity, as shown in Howard Williams's

history, The Ethics of Diet (1883). Records show a traditional association

between certain human cultures throughout the world and a diet comprising,

though not necessarily based on, meat. A vigorous human lifestyle can sustain

some intake of the flesh of vigorous animals. However, westernized populations

are not active by stone age standards, and the mass-produced animals whose body

parts and secretions they consume are forced to live sedentary lives, in filth

and confinement, because natural activity expends energy that " wastes feed. "

There is clear evidence that an animal-based diet causes degenerative

diseases--actual cases can be cited and actual clogged arteries and starved

internal organs can be viewed every day in the hospital or morgue. Where is the

comparable evidence showing that people living on a varied plant-based diet

suffer, as a result, from calcium, protein, and iron deficiencies, heart attacks

and strokes? Studies currently conducted by Dr. Dean Ornish and Dr. T. Colin

Campbell in the U.S. and China show the opposite. European travellers in the

18th and 19th centuries marveled at the vigor and longevity of peasants in

Turkey, Russia, South America and elsewhere: they were amazed that people living

on such " impoverished fare " as rice, beans, millet and potatoes could be so

hardy and long-lived. While there is no evidence that the human body needs

animal products, there is abundant evidence that the human body thrives on a

nutritious plant-based diet.

 

There is no such thing as cruelty-free food! To raise vegetables, you have to

kill animals-- " pests " who would otherwise eat up your crops, like rodents and

insects. What's the difference between directly killing animals for food and

killing them to protect crops and grains?

Assuming that all known methods of harmless self-protection have been exhausted,

there is still a definite difference between defending oneself from predators

(including insects) and deliberately bringing creatures into the world to suffer

and be killed for one's appetites and habits. We kill bacteria to defend our

teeth from decay. Only thoughtlessness considers this the same as, or a

justification for, slaughterhouses and the violence surrounding

them--castration, debeaking, starvation, force- feeding, electrical shock, etc.

What's wrong with eggs and milk? Eating dairy products and eggs is not the same

as eating animals, is it?

Vegetarians do not eat animals, but, according to the traditional use of the

term, they may choose to consume dairy products and eggs, in which case they are

called lacto-ovo (milk and egg) vegetarians. These distinctions are essentially

academic, as the production of eggs and dairy products involves enormous killing

as does the production of meat. Surplus cockerels, unwanted calves, " spent "

dairy cows and laying fowl have been slaughtered, bludgeoned, trashed, drowned

and ditched through the ages. Disposing of the " surplus " males by the dairy

industry is the basis of the veal calf industry. The egg industry trashes half

the population of birds born--more than 25O million male chicks--every year.

In fact, dairy products and eggs are every bit as much animal parts as " meat "

(muscle tissue) is. No less than muscles, these parts derive from and comprise

within themselves the physiological, metabolic, and hormonal activities of an

animal's body, and a magnitude of bodily expense. A hen's egg is a generative

cell, or ovum, with a store of food and immunity for an embryo that, in nature,

would normally be growing inside the egg. Milk is the provision of food and

immunity that is produced by the body of a female mammal for her nursing

offspring. Milk, literally, is baby food.

 

For thousands of years, human beings have manipulated the bodies of hens and

cows in order to extract these body, or baby, parts for themselves. Now as in

the past, the economically " spent " fowl and cow are shipped to the

slaughterhouse when their bodies no longer pay. They endure days of pre-

slaughter starvation and long trips to the slaughterhouse because of their low

carcass value. To be a lacto-ovo vegetarian is not to wash one's hands of misery

and murder.

 

What about jobs? What will happen to all the jobs if people stop consuming

animal products? Are you trying to put people out of work?

The fear pounded into meat-industry workers about losing their jobs if people

convert to a vegetarian diet locks them into the only fate they know. As long as

people exist, food will have to be produced and someone will have to produce it

for them. Imagine if all those protein-rich soybeans and other produce now fed

to farm animals were harvested directly for people and turned into everything

from burgers to ice cream. Imagine all the jobs! The huge amount of money that

is now being spent to patch up human bodies ravaged by animal-based diets and to

clean up an environment increasingly polluted by farm animal wastes could be

used to retrain workers and redirect food technologies. As consumers, we can use

our enormous purchasing power to speed technological conversion to the

production of all-vegetarian foods. In retooling, producers will " create their

own competition, " hiring just as many workers as before in order to feed the

hungry-as-ever human population.

What about human problems? Why concentrate on animals when so many suffering

people need help?

Are Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) badgered with why they are not working

instead for battered women or abused children or some other cause? Were

Americans who fought against slavery attacked for ignoring the plight of white

people? Choosing a particular issue does not mean that one is indifferent to

other concerns. Animal abuse, like child abuse and spouse abuse, is a human

problem. The world that we have made for farm animals to live in hurts people as

well as the animals and offers good evidence that hardening of the sensibilities

is an even worse disease than hardening of the arteries. As human beings, we

have a responsibility to the victims of our society and our species, whoever and

wherever those victims may be. Every social justice movement in history has been

scorned by the mainstream, which is made up ironically of people whose own

freedoms and rights were won by revolutionaries at an earlier time.

Forget about ethics. You'll make a better case for vegetarianism if you stick to

health and environmental issues. Do you honestly think most people are ever

going to care about farm animals?

Some people argue that we should emphasize health, food- safety, and

environmental issues rather than the animals and their plight, because humans

are basically selfish. While it is important to combine these issues whenever

possible, it is a mistake to assume that people cannot or will not care about

their fellow creatures. Just as we owe it to our animal victims to rescue them

from cruel and degrading circumstances, so we owe it to them to be their voice.

To insist that most people will never care about farm animals is to create a

self-fulfilling prophecy. A little more than a century ago, most people " didn't

want to hear about " human slaves, either. Many more people will openly care and

move toward change when they feel it is socially safe. Millions of people have

impulses of compassion which have been stifled by self-doubt and fear of

ridicule. Eventually, some of the health and environmental problems that are

caused by an animal-based diet may be solved or reduced by technology, at least

in the short run. Only the ethics of diet, the pain and suffering, the shared

mortality and claims of our fellow creatures upon us are lasting.