Are Some Animals More Important Than Others?

I never really put much thought into this before I went vegan.  It’s amazing what happens when you open yourself up to other points of view, sometimes quite shocking.  The longer I am vegan, the more aware it feels I become.

 One such observation I made was the apparent inconsistencies in how our society treats certain types of animals when compared to others.  Take for instance dogs.  People care deeply about and love their dogs, incorporating them into their homes and calling them members of their families.  You would be hard-pressed to find a neighborhood without dogs.  There are non-profit organizations everywhere you turn rescuing dogs, rehoming dogs, caring for dogs.  There are even organizations that elicit your emotional love of dogs on television and in print in an attempt to get you to open your wallet and give them money…and lots of us do to the tune of approximately 9 billion dollars in 2013 alone!  But we’ll talk more about that in another blog post.  

Do Plants Feel Pain?

I have heard many non-vegans argue that plants feel pain, and that if vegans were so concerned about the suffering of other living beings, vegans wouldn’t murder plants either.  They often go on to say that since humans have no other way than to cause another life pain, then we might as well keep killing animals and plants so we can survive.

“Everyone knows the difference between taking a carrot out of the ground and slicing a pig into pieces.  Everyone knows the difference between mowing a lawn and tossing a live baby male chick (egg industry) into a rendering machine.  If one does not understand the difference, then that person is disingenuous, irrational and illogical.  The fact that some people compare carrots to cows proves how muck-deep in oppressive thought meat-eaters truly are.”  ~Gary Yourofsky, ADAPTT.org