Did you know that plants communicate threats and try to protect their offspring?
HappyCow is an excellent resource! I live and work in small towns without any vegan or vegetarian places, so it’s great to have a site that lists places where I can go and know I can eat something.
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Or any GCSE level Biology book
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Fundamentally, vegans have decided that killing certain living organisms for food is acceptable and killing others is not.
I feel the same. It’s just my list of acceptable is different.
Funnily enough my GCE Biology and even my A level biology didn’t cover the ethics of choosing which organisms to kill for food.
Great! So I assume you’d be equally as upset if I came to your house and killed your dog/cat, than if I came and stole your houseplants.
Your argument is that these are equivalent things - yes?
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I’m not a vegan, but why is that a problem?
Everyone is entitled to live their life as they see fit.
No not at all. There is a continuum, all life is sacred, but I am happy with my choices.
I didn’t say there was a problem, I was responding to Rat-au-van’s post - it asserts that it is ethical to eat plants but not animals. That is a choice, there are no absolutes in ethics.
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Are plants aware? Are they sentient?
You put a baby in a cot with a rabbit and an apple, I know which one will be eaten first.
We’re living in a world where we are intelligent enough to know we can survive easily without causing pain to others. Wether history says it’s what we’ve always done, doesn’t mean it was “right”, I’m proud that I can live healthy and guilt free without having to cause any suffering.
Like ive said before each to their own, but playing the plants have feelings card is pretty much end of the conversation, the “all in” for no good case to keep it going.
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Thank you. That is a great and clear explanation of the difference between killing sentient creatures and non-sentient plants.
I would also argue that many plants especially fruit and vegetables have evolved to require being harvested and eaten. An apples purpose is to be eaten in order to spread its seeds and therefore eating an apple definitely does not harm the apple tree
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Actually I wasn’t playing the ‘plants have feelings card’, this is typical of any discussion where people have an emotional attachment to their choice.
I was saying that you have made a choice, based on criteria that are important to you. I’m saying that the criteria are not absolute - it is perfectly valid to reject them and still be an ethical person.
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Well that was my bad mis-reading the way you was explaining, I take that back 
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But many plants such as wheat have evolved protection mechanisms to stop animals eating them - do you then avoid those?
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That seems like a dangerous argument.
At what point does it stop being valid to reject the criteria? Does this argument apply to genocide? Can the person who caused the genocide still be considered ethical?
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We’ve evolved to be unable to kill animals without need for using “tools”, do you still eat these?
Comes down to whether you believe there are absolute morals or whether they are socially created. I’m in the latter camp.
I’d argue, what gives you the right to determine what is ethical for me?
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I can and have dispatched animals with my hands. It’s the normal way to kill a properly raised chicken.
I don’t. It’s not the distinction I use to determine wether or not I’m willing to kill an organism. My personal distinction comes from sentience and suffering
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But you argued that some plants are evolved to be eaten therefore it’s right to eat them. If you reject the corollary to your argument then I’d suggest it was a weak argument in the first place.
Does it matter whether I believe genocide being wrong is an absolute wrong or whether it’s socially created? The outcome, after all, remains the same.
Industrialised animal agriculture is unethical by most standards, even by many who partake in it. Most meat eaters I know only have the cognitive dissonance level required to be blissfully ignorant, and will be noticeably uncomfortable if forced to view the reality of industrial farming, such as completely unedited slaughterhouse camera footage. It’s why it’s so effective that the farming unions have (perhaps successfully) pushed to ban this kind of footage.
Judging your individual ethics on a system that is commonplace doesn’t really make sense. You might condone it and contribute to it but you didn’t create it, nor are you (I hope) the owner of a factory farming facility or slaughterhouse etc. You can be an ethical person within varying degrees and still contribute to a non-ethical paradigm. I know several anti-civilisation campaigners who would argue that all human beings fall into this category 
I am not determining what is and what isn’t ethical for you as an individual, but I will point out that if you view industrialised animal agriculture as ethical, then you are arguing for mass slavery, rape and genocide. You may well find these things to be ethical, perhaps on the basis of speciesism hierarchy, but it’s a worldview of species privilege.
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I eat far too many crisps to go vegan (all the good ones contain milk for some reason) but pretty much everything else I consume is.
My main source of protein is Seitan I make from scratch fried in a spicy marinade or the product of my perpetual quest to create a KFC-style breading.
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