Before starting this post, I must say I have no agenda against non-vegetarians nor I think that non-vegetarians are any less of a human being. Strictly speaking, it’s completely a personal choice for one to how they wanna pursue their life. What is the motive of this post is to answer a some of the most popular arguments which I can bet you must have come across in your life regardless of what you eat.
Plants are also “living” beings. Eating them is also killing.
Now to answer that you need to understand about vegetarian food which includes eating grains, fruits and vegetables.
Grains are obtained by plants which are or almost dead, YES! they are mostly seasonal crops which die after their season and left us with their products which are grains. this category includes rice, wheat, barley etc.
Fruits are not living they are made by plants to store starch and nutrients for their seeds. Fruits are obtained from the tree which carries on living their whole life while we occasionally get to pluck food once or twice a year.
Vegetables, while some of the vegetables we eat are fruits others are also not involved killing except some. what are those? vegetables that grow underground like potato, etc are in between their lifespan when they are plucked out and hence can be counted as killing. For which I wanna point out that plants don’t have a nervous system and hence they are non-sentient beings which do makes me relax that no one has to suffer because I have to enjoy a meal.
Plants don’t feel pain? Are you serious?
So before the soul of Dr Jagadish Chandra Bose starts screaming at us, let me say there is no reputable study present which shows plants are sentient beings(capable of feeling emotions like humans). Yes, Dr Jagadish research proves that plants have life and they are a different type of life form. In no way, he proved that plants are able to feel. Plants don’t have a nervous system and hence they are unable to experience any human sentiments. Lack of nervous system makes them not be able to feel pain or understand suffering.
They can, however, detect when they are damaged. Certain plants emit chemicals when their leaves are fed upon by insects that actually attract wasps that feed on those insects, or which signal other trees to boost production of anti-feeding chemicals. Some also have a mechanism to repair the small amount of damage that is by directing their food minerals to the damaged part by the means of xylem and phloem. That’s impressive, but it is not pain. No nerves are involved. It’s just chemistry, similar to how your skin increases melanin production when exposed to sunlight. Case in point: if you damage the leaves of these plants using mechanical tools, no chemicals are released.
There have been some of the studies proving they “scream” when cut and “knows” when they are being eaten, none of these is in any peer-reviewed journals making them nothing but a pseudoscience. Why is it so hard to believe that plants don’t feel pain, there is some rare disease which makes humans not been able to feel pain. Pain and sentiments are not prerequisite for being alive. Plants are a different kind of life form, they are very fascinating, yes, but there is no need of anthropomorphization.
It’s all food chain, Humans are omnivores, Lion also eats in wild.
Yes indeed, But then how it is different from humans eating animals? Lion Hunts! , while humans breed animals forcefully. These animals are been subjected to inhumane conditions on a farm throughout their whole life just to be slaughtered one day by us. that’s cruelty!. An animal in a wild doesn’t have to suffer his whole life just to be one day consumed by upper organisms of the food chain. Humans breed them, raise them in horrible conditions just for the sake of slaughter.
I personally am not against killing, I am against the cruelty that animals are subjected to in order to become food for us humans. Even if animals are killed for meat, I believe that they must be bred in humane, natural conditions and must enjoy their lives till they live. Also, they must be allowed to live up to a certain age at least. This would be more consistent with the system of predators in jungles eating prey.
At Last, I again wanna mention I am not at all claiming that I have any kind of moral high ground being a vegetarian. Ethics are something which is really really subjective. The views on this topic are subjected to the concepts of Ethics, Religious and Individuality. Different people have different views according to their own concept.
For me, Ethically it’s not incorrect at all, Religiously it is maybe for some (Religions are funny), Individually, you know what you are doing, I am no one to question.
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