Do you think flowers scream when you pick them?

Yes, actually.

I think plants experience pain, or at least, something if we were experiencing it, we would consider pain. I think the smell of freshly mown grass is the smell of agony.

At the risk of setting off another ask box fight, this is why I find compassion arguments for veganism and vegetarianism unconvincing. I understand that animals feel pain when they are killed for food. I agree that the conditions of factory farms are deplorable, and that we should minimize suffering and improve conditions of the animals we eat. However, I don’t think this is sufficient reason to not eat meat at all. 

The nature of eating is that we have to take energy and nutrients from other entities in order to sustain our own lives. I don’t think there’s a solid moral distinction that can really be made between the objective suffering of a plant and of an animal–subjectively of course, we experience them very differently, or rather, we don’t experience the suffering of plants at all. 

There are lots and lots of other reasons to be vegetarian or vegan. Meat production is a waste of resources and land, it’s bad for the environment, it’s expensive. But death and destruction is fundamental to all consumption, in my mind. 

But hey! I’m a weirdo who thinks jobs didn’t exist several centuries ago! What do I know? Don’t @ me.