But Can It Feel the Pain?

A Wrong Argument When Debating Veganism

Many times, vegan activists and their opponents get caught up in arguments about whether or not the organism being consumed can feel pain. I believe it is a pointless debate to have.

Can plants feel pain? Maybe, I don’t know. They certainly have the capacity to react to or mitigate situations that are not beneficial to them, such as too much or too little sunlight, fungal infections, insect predation, and so on. So obviously, they need to have some sort of recognition of these harms and an urgency to avoid them. If that system is called pain, so be it.

However, this is beyond the question and should not be debated at all. Every life form on Earth relies on another in some way or another. Even plants and fungi require dead, decomposing (or decomposed) organic material to survive, and that includes suffering. It’s just the cycle of life, period. Whether a carrot feels more pain than a baby calf and whether a carrot’s life is of equal value to that of a chicken is a question that should be left to teenage debate groups, bored philosophers or Neil deGrasse Tyson.

The much more significant and mature debate should focus on another question: Is it necessary?

Is it necessary to kill a chicken for me to survive? Is it necessary to pull a carrot out of the ground? Is it necessary to cut down the chicory plant completely, or could I just harvest the outer leaves and let it grow further?