A few days ago I started a discussion here about the ethics of manipulating certain livestock traits through bio-engineering (to factor out the animal’s awareness or its pain threshold, for instance).
That discussion was picked up and expanded upon by the urbane and erudite Doc Weevil.
Now this, from researchers at the University of Bonn: “The killing fields: Thoughts on man’s inhumanity to plants”:
Scientists at the University of Bonn have discovered that plants do indeed cry when they are cut, moan when they are ill and gurgle when they are well. The more stress we subject them to, the more noise they make.
The human ear is not sensitive enough to hear these distress signals, but German physicists have developed laser-driven microphones which can pick up the sounds. Their vibrations come from ethylene gas which plants discharge when their health is threatened. An attack of mildew, for instance, produces cries of pain long before any spots appear on a cucumber
7 Replies to “Lettuce help you ease your pain”
Those damn vegans! The suffering their lifestyle causes disgusts me.
Watch, in a couple decades (if this is actually true and becomes common knowledge) the vegan-types will be trying to convince us to eat some kind of sludge that has organic ingredients but has never been living. Either that or it’ll be Soylent Green and they will just claim that it isn’t made of anything that was once alive…
The mantle of insufferable moral superiority will just be assumed by fruitarians.
Fortunately, the fruitarian diet is a very restricted one, lackng in many nutrients. If we can just get them to insist on having their food be organic, too, we can confidently expect them to die of deficiency diseases in a few tears.
Funny you mention fruitarians, John. That’s exactly who my vegan buddy pointed me towards.
Steve: <i>Soylent Green</i> is people. But the sludge sounds kinda yummy—if we rename it “cream filling,” that is, and stick it inside of a phallic-shaped sponge cake…
Jeff,
You slay me; as long as they don’t start tinkering around with Becks beer–I’m good to go!
For shame, Tiger Lily, how could your drink beer knowing how all of those yeast cells died a horrible death? Not to mention the hops, barley, and whatever else (horse urine?) it is that goes into beer.
And as for wine – the horror, the horror! Does not the clever grape vine bemoan the loss of its children?
The needs of the many must outweigh the needs of the few. A single cow’s quick and humane death can feed a person for months whilst entire fields of wheat would have to meet their maker to accomplish the same. Of course the cow has to eat fields of wheat to reach that size, but it is natural for the cow to do so and a matter of cow ethics and not human.
In order to reduce the suffering in the world we must eschew plant matter and eat only animals.
Myria
You’re right, Myria.
And in light the immense suffering in the world–which we are just now becoming aware of–we must harden our hearts.
Damn them! Damn the cattle! Damn those cows that attack the innocent blades of grass! Damn the wretched lambs, which rend the soft green foliage! We must harden our hearts!
We must remember, the Animals are the villains! If they should feel pain when we kill them, then so be it: it would be only justice for the misery they have inflicted on planthood.