Expert: Robin Flynn - 4/24/2007

Question
Hello,
     I've currently adopted a vegan diet for the sake of animals but many people around me tell me that plants feel pain too. Some vegans told me they didn't, others said that even if they would we would do less harm because consuming meat involve massive plant consumption. Do you think that plants can truly feel pain and therefore have rights too? Do you know any real scientific studies that have treated the issue whether plants can feel pain or not? Thanks a lot !!!

Answer
Hi Jack,

Congratulations!! I’m glad to know you have chosen a vegan lifestyle. I also made my decision because of animal suffering. However, I now see my decision is a benefit to my health and the environment. When I first went vegan people who were threatened by my decision also told me that plants feel pain. Honestly, a very weak and uneducated argument. However I found it worth exploring. I know that plants do not feel pain.

Plants, when stressed, release a chemical called ethylene. This chemical indicates that the plant needs to increase cell growth or take other measures against the perceived stressor. Scientists measured levels of ethylene released from stressed plants by “listening” to them using lasers until a certain frequency was measured. This producers the "screams" that people will tell you is proof that plants “feel pain”. While this research shows that plants might have a stress-avoidance response, it is quite a stretch to refer to this as “pain.”

The World Health Organization has defined pain as “an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage, or described in terms of such damage”.  Plants lack nerve endings, brains, hormones, and other structures that would allow them to experience pain. They also lack the ability to move away from sources of stress, an evolutionary trait linked with the ability to feel pain. It is even more erroneous to equate this response with the pain suffered by animals and human beings. I am not aware of any scientific proof that unequivocally proves plants feel pain. I usually ask the person asking to prove that plants feel pain.

Animals on factory farms are treated like meat, milk, and egg machines. Chickens have their sensitive beaks seared off with a hot blade, and male cattle and pigs are castrated without any painkillers. All farmed chickens, turkeys, and pigs spend their brief lives in dark and crowded warehouses, many of them so cramped that they can't even turn around or spread a single wing. They are mired in their own waste, and the stench of ammonia fills the air. Animals raised for food are bred and drugged to grow as large as possible as quickly as possible—many are so heavy that they become crippled under their own weight and die within inches of their water supply.  Animals on factory farms do not see the sun or get a breath of fresh air until they are prodded and crammed onto trucks for a nightmarish ride to the slaughterhouse, often through weather extremes and always without food or water. Many die during transport, and others are too sick or weak to walk off the truck after they reach the slaughterhouse. The animals who survive this hellish ordeal are hung upside-down and their throats are slit, often while they're completely conscious. Many are still alive while they are skinned, hacked into pieces, or scalded in the defeathering tanks. Even if plants could feel pain they would never experience the horrific plight that animals endure.

And those who argue that plants feel pain and suffer should support a vegan diet because the number of plants that must be fed to an animal to produce enough meat for one human is greater than the number of plants required to feed that same human if he or she ate the plants directly. Meat-eaters are responsible for “killing” 10 times more plants than vegetarians, and they also kill and cause suffering to animals.

Please also read why veganism is a smart decision from these sites below:

http://www.sugarrocket.com/vegan/why-i-am-vegan.php
http://www.flex.com/~jai/articles/101.html
http://www.vnv.org.au/WhyBeVegan.htm
http://www.vegansociety.com/phpws/index.php?module=faq&FAQ_op=viewFAQs
http://www.goveg.com/vegetarian101.asp

Please read a great article from Satya magazine: Let Us Eat Plants
http://www.satyamag.com/march97/eatplants.html

I hope this information is helpful to you. When people argue far fetched reasons with me I truly believe they know deep down know that veganism is the right answer for many of the worlds evils. Please know their are many vegans out there and our numbers are growing. Someday we will look at animal injustices the same way we look at human slavery.

For the animals,
Robin