Re:Insects are more sensitive than they seem
by sweetheart on Saturday December 11, 2021 @10:11AM
(#29521360)
I don't think any of that is relevant to the moral issue of eating animals when we don't need to to survive.
The fact that animals die horrible deaths in the natural world is entirely irrelevant to our moral obligations to induce suffering.
We can cross the plants-feel-pain bridge when and if we get there.
I'm not claiming that farm lives (or worse, industry lives) are in any sense good, or even better, but it's important to remember that nature itself has no qualms in inflicting pain and suffering on animals.
Not to mention, we're only starting to learn how complex plants and fungi are, and that they have their own abilities to perceive the world, react to it, and communicate their reactions to other individuals. If (and this is a huge If, I fully admit that) it turns out plants and fungi are also capable of emotion or hurt, we really will need to re-examine some base assumptions of our morality.