No offense to anyone but I'd like to tell my own opinion about this argument and I will try to be as educated as possible .

As we all know no scientific study has yet proved that plants can feel pain , but this doesn't mean they don't . There are plenty of parasites who stick to living plants and live off of them . Those parasites use painkiller substances so the plant will never notice they are being slowly sucked to death . what does it meant ?

if parasites are forced to use painkiller this mean that some , not all probably but some do actually feel pain .

Another thing many people ignore is that plants live too , plants not only have the basic habits of every living form on this planet but they also have a smart way to communicate with other plants of the same specie , some Plants are smarter than normal ones and can communicate with animals . So we can say that at least in communication plants are smarter than animals . Lastly , Plants are the only non-killer living beings on this planet . The only ones who don't need to kill something to survive , some particular plants do eat insects like the nephenthes but those are really rare and exotic plants .

So well , the true pacifists on this world are plants and i think it is, in a morally way worse to eat plants instead animals , because eating the most innocent being is worse than eating a less innocent creature , right ?

I'm not saying anyone should stop being vegetarian or Vegan , just my though on it and wanted to share .

I think it's perfectly moral to eat plants.
I also think it's moral to eat the animal you've killed for the purpose of eating it.

The matter is feeding oneself ! There is nothing immoral in feeding oneself. Basical stuff living beings are bound to do.

The moral question for me is the horrifiying food industry, including non-animal one (see palm oil).

Innocence ? animals are not less innocent than plants because they're higher on the food chain. It's not like they had a choice.

Well, I can give up animal products, I can't give up plants. Just like a lion needs to eat meat to survive, therefore it's not immoral. Since I will die if I don't eat plants, I eat them. They aren't sentient, have no nervous system, etc and that's good enough for me. We also have to look at the environmental cost. One hamburger takes about 660 gallons of water to produce and the methane from meat and dairy is way higher than all transportation combined. Also the fact that half (here in the USA) of plants grown go to feed animals. If there's less demand for animal products, then less plants consumed total and less plants harmed and less pain if they feel pain. There's no way to lose here(:

I'm ok with remaining alive by eating plants. If studies ever did prove for sure that plants do feel pain, no doubt I'd have a rethink. At the present time, veganism entailing eating plants, is the best option I've/we've got.

Same with my atheism and currently no proof that a god exists.

This^^. I need plants to survive. I don't need to consume animals. Animal agriculture uses a tremendous amount of resources, especially plants and land. Plants also don't grieve for their babies or run from danger.

I meant to quote turtle lover but I'm on my phone. Grrr

Plants don't have brains or a heart beat.

It's impossible for plants to suffer because it's impossible for them to be conscious. Consciousness is a function of the brain, which plants do not have. Similarly, the cells in your body "communicate" with one another, "cooperate" to perform certain tasks, "respond" to stimuli, yet they are not conscious.

Even if plants were sentient creatures worthy of moral consideration, veganism would still be the more compassionate option. It takes a great many plant deaths to raise an animal for slaughter, plus the animal's death. It would require fewer plants to simply eat plants directly.

I have actually seen a couple documentaries and read some interesting articles in the past about there being more to plants than we yet realize (in the sense they have forms of chemical communication with one another and do respond to stimulus). That said, as a homo sapient, I am a frugivore and plants are what nature intended for me to eat. I also do not believe any suffering a plant may experience is comparable to the suffering a sentient being might.

Not that I would consider it personally, but there are actually some extreme forms of fruitarianism out there where they only eat fruit from plants that do not die as a result of their consuming them (for example, apples are fine since the tree doesn't die from eating it's fruit whereas cabbage is not because you had to kill the plant to consume it).

Let's just say, for the sake of argument, that plants feel pain and that they feel pain at an equivalent intensity as animals. STILL, even then, veganism is preferable. That's because:
- eating lower on the food chain requires less total suffering,
due to trophic levels. That is, calorie for calorie a diet of all plants requires fewer plants. Feeding plants to animals and then feeding animals to humans is inefficient, wasteful.

Additional arguments in favor of eating plants rather than animals:
- humans must eat plants to survive
- it's unlikely that plants feel
- if plants have sensation, it's unlikely to be similar to what we consider "pain"
- a plant-based diet is better for human health
- a plant-based diet is better for the environment

Plants can actually kill.
Weeds.
Crab grass.
Ivy.
Thorns.
Moss.
Also, when too close together, plants will suffocate the other for water and minerals in the soil.

If you plant flowers at the base of trees, the flowers will die.

Also, trees will sometimes grow tiny trees and offshoots, which will kill the original tree if not pruned.

It's all about survival.

I do believe that plants may have a kind of conciousness, and maybe feel pain.

I believe in ghosts for example, so therefore logically I can see that you don't need a biological brain in order to be conscious, so then maybe neither does a plant....their conciousness is at a cellular level.

Plants might be like very drunk people, who can't feel anything, and are only vaguely aware......and carry on existing after they have been consumed...(the plants I mean)

I have long been puzzled by claims that plants feel pain. Like other contributors to this thread, I think there might be an important difference between biochemical events, and the consciousness of these. The reason that, so far, I beleive that plants do not experience pain is that one of the primary functions of pain experience in animals is to provoke speedy aversive behaviour - to get away from the cause of pain smartly. Now plants can move, but, with the exception of carnivorous plants, they do so very slowly...so slowly that it seems unlikely that a pain experience can be performing it's function. In fact, I wonder, what would be the function of pain experience in plants?

But I am no scientist. I'd like my opinion on this to be more informed, if others know more.

if a person can choose to eat plants or animals, I think they should choose plants. Animals are sentient, no question about it. I think it is a terrible argument, to say that it's morally acceptable to kill animals because plants *might* feel pain.

Good point , but what if leafs are actually a kind primitive nervous system ?
Is known that leafs communicate with each other and with roots , so it could be possible .

Plants can defend themselves by releasing hormones to communicate with other animals , a pain function would be kind of helpful so the plant can notice the harmful situations and ask for help .

Also Mimosa Pudica is the fastest non-carnivorous plant on earth which reacts instantly to touch or heat and seals itself for defense

If so, it would have no bearing on the issue of consciousness, and anyway what difference would it make? That plants are sentient is no excuse to harm animals, and veganism would still cause the least suffering. Asking if plants feel pain is like asking if we're hurting the air by breathing; it's unlikely, unknowable, and impossible to avoid.

Plants do react physiologically to injury, but that does not mean any pain is involved. A professor in one of my college botany classes once mentioned that none of the experiments purporting to show that plants feel pain had been reproduced by professional scientists- and in science, the result of an experiment should be reproducible, or else the original experiment is questioned. Where did you hear or read that insects who live by sucking plant sap use a painkiller on plants?

Exactly!!!! Pain has survival value only if the organism experiencing pain can act to get away from it.

ETA: to answer the question beginning this thread: Yes.

EDITED TO ADD AGAIN: this is the Vegan Support Forum- perhaps this thread belongs in the Compost Heap?

Respondent 'no whey jose' has nailed the answer almost exactly as I had intended to reply. The bottom line is that we must eat something. That is a law of existence. By eating meat, we not only cause the obvious suffering of animals losing their lives. In breeding such animals, we also cause a geometrically greater amount of plant life to die. Therefore if the objective is to minimize a perceived condition of plant suffering and plant death, we will harm fewer plants by not breeding animals to eat. And by the way, factory farming is one of the biggest plant destroyers threatening this whole planet.

I am not so sure however that plants have no form of consciousness. I think that if they do, it could not possibly be a faint shadow of animals' ability to feel pain. Therefore on that basis, I always try to apply ahimsa to plants within reason. I would use dead wood rather than living trees for wood when practical. I may express love to someone without picking flowers in most but not all situations. I don't kill something just because it is called a dandelion or 'weed' but I might make dandelion soup if I choose.

We should try to protect plants from needless slaughter even if they cannot feel significant pain or any pain at all. But even if they could feel pain as we know it, we would still depend on them as food. Fortunately, I do not think that plants experience any pain remotely similar to any creature with a central nervous system. But plants are an essence of paradise. We should know them, love them and protect them on a vastly greater scale than we do.