I'm vegan and this is so obviously not an issue ethically. Never mind that vastly more plants need to be harvested to feed livestock, this is a chemical response that is in no way similar to the pain an animal feels.
Go cut your lawn and then kill baby cow and try to tell me it's the same.
"This is a chemical response..." As opposed to sensation of pain, which is a also chemical signal? All sensation is chemical signaling. In fact all your experience of life. Us the result of chemical signaling. (Like dopamine, Serotonin, etc)
I agree with everything you said, it's just that this was a terrible argument.
Interesting, as explained in the article the smell (VOC) we would experience of a newly cut lawn would technically be the cries of the plants. So other plants see it as a warning and they bolster their defenses. Ain't that no different from a baby cow being killed slowly probably through a predator. It would communicate through cries. Making similar animals interpret this as a warning perhaps making them react by running away or fighting back. Maybe we don't see the VOC as act of cry because we simply don't have any idea how to process it, since we're not plants. Though we could argue that plants does not have consciousness as we're aware of while animals do.
Edit: anyways not trying to question your choice of veganism, I think it's a noble choice. I just wanted to share my thought on that statement you mentioned.
vastly more plants need to be harvested to feed livestock,
i don't think this is true. many breeds are ruminants, and no plants are harvested for them at all, as they graze. i don't think it's strictly true that any plant ever needs to be harvested to be fed to livestock.
I see comments like this and realize something is defederated for my instance somewhere and I’m missing half of the conversations OR half of y’all need to up your dosage 😂