While all vegetarians and vegans agree that plants too have life and therefore they are taking away life when they eat vegetables, they justify it by saying that “plants do not feel pain as they do not have a Central Nervous System, pain sensors or emotional relationships like animals and hence it is all right to kill them.”
I am a vegetarian and yet that is not my philosophy or conviction. I believe that the above argument that we vegetarians give is weak. If we do not give the above as justification for killing plants for food, then we will have nothing to eat.
And my reasons are as follows:
Is a Central Nervous System (CNS) necessary to feel pain?
Before we can answer that, I think we need to first define what is pain? According to me any response that an organism gives out to an adverse stimulus which threatens it or its gene pool’s continuation is pain. (If someone disagrees, then person has to let us know what this response to adverse stimulus is). The adverse stimulus could be of any nature – electrical, chemical, and physical or whatever that is unnatural.
I have not read of or come across any organism that lacks sensory mechanisms to warn it of outside threats to its life. You stimulate amoeba (one celled organisms and they react) and they respond as if they are trying to minimize threat to their existence. So do plants and other lower animals like insects, mosquitoes etc. This would mean that they do experience “pain” in their own way which may not be in agreement with the pain that we define in our Oxfords or Webster’s.
Therefore, a CNS is not a prerequisite to feel pain.
Invertebrates have no CNS, so can vegetarians eat prawns?
It has been shown by the scientific community and accepted by parliaments that invertebrates do not feel pain. The Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs of the Parliament of Canada concluded that although it is impossible to know the subjective experience of another animal with certainty, the balance of the evidence suggests that most invertebrates do not feel pain. The evidence is most robust for insects, and, for these animals, the consensus is that they do not feel pain. It also states that, “Invertebrates are classically defined as animals, which lack a’ backbone’ or dorsal nerve cord, such as insects, crustacea (e.g. shrimp, lobster and crab), and molluscs (e.g. clams, snails, and squid). Traditionally, these animals have not been included in legislation concerning cruelty to animals.” That is right – these animals are not protected by legislation as well.
So should we vegetarians partake of prawns, lobsters etc?
Lobsters remind me of another study done in Norway “to determine if invertebrates should be subject to animal welfare legislation as Norway revises its animal welfare law,” also concluded that its unlikely lobsters feel pain.
Medical Experts say Human foetus does not feel pain till the third trimester
That is also the reason why many countries where abortion is legal have an outside limit of 20-24 weeks. As per the medical fraternity there is a consensus that a human foetus does not feel pain before it is at least 20 weeks and some even put the age of the foetus to be around 26 weeks when it can feel pain. The reason again is that by that time the nervous system is not yet tuned to sense pain as we define it.
Why is it then, that we make abortion to be such a big deal? We do that because we believe that it is incorrect to take away the life of an unborn child – whether or not it has a CNS to experience pain or not.
A similar yardstick should also be applied to other organisms as well – if we are as compassionate as we would like to believe ourselves to be, then we should apply the same rules to all living beings – only then can we call ourselves to be wise, intelligent and highest in the life kingdom – next only to the Creator.
I therefore feel that just because a living being has no Central Nervous System and therefore is incapable of experiencing “pain” as we define it is no reason to justify depriving it of its life.
The only reasons that we can justify to killing vegetables for food are:
- a. that it is how nature is,
- b. All living beings feed of other living beings and hence there is nothing wrong in taking plant life to feed ourselves.
The argument in favour of being a vegetarian is therefore not that it is cruel to kill animals.
In my opinion there are only two arguments in favour of being a vegetarian and both are extremely strong:
1. It is unnatural for us human beings to eat meat, and
2. It is suicidal for us to eat meat for environmental reasons.
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Hello,
Do keep up your work — it’s heartening to see someone take the trouble to think about what should be and what is. But I must introduce my conception of why vegetarianism, why not animals, and why plants:
1. “What is natural” is not a good argument because we aren’t leading natural lives anyway. For example, clothes. Do we have the ability to, “without external help,” weave the clothes we wear? If a pig must be killed with an implement, remember that we use implements for our clothing and shelter, for our thought and entertainment, indeed, for everything. Your argument would mean that we should live exactly like savages. Do you write your articles “without external help”? (Not to be rude, but to shake you to the meaning of what you’re saying.)
2. If uncivilised men kill, say, hens with their bare hands and eat them and feel no guilt because they are savage, it is 100.00% natural, and I don’t think anyone can argue that they “shouldn’t” be killing the hens.
3. Most important: when you farm animals to kill it, *you are negating life, and thus the purpose of the universe.* The universe is struggling to become self-aware, and this manifests in the gradual evolution to man. When man turns living beings into mere molecules, it is the antithesis of the universe; he is going in *exactly* the opposite direction of the universe — in other words, if you believe in god etc., then if god is doing plus-x, the butcher is doing minus-x. That is the be-all and end-all of it.
–von Neumann
I liked your article Sanjeev. Although my reasons for converting to vegetarianism is quite different from the ones you mentioned, I appreciate your article nonetheless. However I would just like to add a note. I do not think that if you are trying to convince a meat eater to convert to vegetarianism by saying that “All living beings feed of other living beings and hence there is nothing wrong in taking plant life to feed ourselves”, they will give your logic back to you saying, “then what is wrong about eating an animal instead? It is anyday tastier than eating a plant.. if we must kill to survive.. then we would rather kill and eat the tastier option”. You cannot totally rule out the absence of pain in organisms that do not have a CNS and in my opinion that would be a stronger justification.
In any case, I respect your logic and just wanted to make a humble comment. No arguments!
Thanks Manisha for your comments.
I am trying to convert a meat eater into vegetarian lifestyle by appealing to his love for the earth and the environment. My conviction is that one of the biggest reasons for the destruction of the environment is the fact that human beings consume flesh. People should not eat meat because they are not meant to eat meat and because they are contributing in the worst possible way to the destruction of the environment. The ecological balance is being destroyed and that is why no meat please.
I am writing my articles to elaborate on the above and they should be available on the blog quite soon.