How to respond: “plants feel pain too!”

“PLANTS FEEL PAIN TOO!” 

This is a special, special place to be in the vegan debate ring! This blog covers how to respond to this illogical argument.

The State of Emotions

If someone is trying to argue that plants have feelings, it’s a sign that they have stooped pretty low on the “logic scale,” and are reacting more from a place of emotion.

When people following an omnivorous diet are confronted with a vegan, it can elicit a lot of emotions. Vegans have chosen to eschew certain foods, fabrics, activities, etc from their lifestyle, typically for ethical, environmental, and/or health reasons.

Vegans are making a conscious choice to be different. 

Some people interpret that choice to be different as vegans believing that they are better. This is coming from an inner place of insecurity. 

“You vegans think you’re better than everyone just because you don’t eat dead animals.” Is a response I’ve received quite a lot. 

When I ask the person to identify or quote my specific words that gave them the impression that I think I’m better than them, it’s always the same exact response: “Well, you didn’t say anything like that. But it’s just all vegans think that way. This is a generalization of my experience with vegans.” 

I’ve literally gotten that response on social media within the last few days.

People have such an emotional reaction to “VEGANS,” they don’t even listen to me or you as an individual. They just blanket stereotype! 

The Tactic: Drag ‘Em Down With Ya

And when people are stereotyping, feeling emotional, and are insecure, they revert to the most basic tactic: drag the other person down. 

They feel they need to bring YOU down in order to level the playing field. 

E.g. You’re not as ethical as you think you are. You’re not as moral as you think you are. You cause MORE death than an omnivorous diet (which is just mathematically impossible). 

Usually, this can go one of two ways: crop deaths, or plants feel pain. 

Most people take the crop deaths route. You can read how to respond to that argument in this blog.

But “plants feel pain” is a special, special variety of this tactic. 

How to Respond

When you truly consider this argument, it’s completely and totally illogical. It really demonstrates how emotional the other person is.

But in order to combat their irrationality, you need to craft a concise, logical response.

The most important points

• Plants do not have a central nervous system, therefore they can’t feel pain

• Plants do not demonstrate sentience, therefore they can’t feel emotions

Something to keep in mind

There is emerging research that plants communicate with one another via chemical pathways. Which is SUPER cool! But this is different from sentience.

I wouldn’t necessarily bring this up on my own in an argument. But if the other person brings this up, you need to be aware of this research and how to respond.

The two most important points in response to this are:

1) Plants do not display the ability to act beyond simple chemical reactions or display emotions or reasoning skills.

2) The Higher Level Response listed below.

Next Level Response

One of my other favorite retorts to this argument is that plants produce appendages (fruits, leaves, etc) in order to entice animals to eat them. Plants want to be eaten, so that animals eat them, poop out their seeds, and further propagate their species. It’s evolutionarily advantageous for plants to be eaten.

Higher Level Response

Let’s pretend that plants feel pain, (which they don’t). Animal agriculture still produces the most pain and suffering. 3 trillion animals suffer and are slaughtered in animal agriculture every year. And all those animals have to eat plants. So if plants feel pain (which they don’t), animal agriculture causes the most pain and suffering because trillions of animals must eat zillions of plants. And all of them are killed. If we wanted to reduce suffering, just eating plants would cause a great deal less suffering than the animal agriculture system. In order to cause the least amount of suffering, it would be best to just eat plants. 

Summary

Plants can not feel pain, they can not feel emotions, and in fact, plants want to be eaten to further their evolution. And even if we indulge the premise of this argument, animal agriculture still causes the most pain, suffering, and death. 

When contrasted with the intelligence, sentience, and capacity for pain and emotions that farmed animals demonstrate, eating plants is by far the best option.