The new piece by Natalie Angier at the New York Times may make things a little more ticklish for people who pick their food on the basis of the characteristics it has or lacks as an organism:
[B]efore we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.
When plant biologists speak of their subjects, they use active verbs and vivid images. Plants “forage” for resources like light and soil nutrients and “anticipate” rough spots and opportunities. By analyzing the ratio of red light and far red light falling on their leaves, for example, they can sense the presence of other chlorophyllated competitors nearby and try to grow the other way. Their roots ride the underground “rhizosphere” and engage in cross-cultural and microbial trade.
“Plants are not static or silly,” said Monika Hilker of the Institute of Biology at the Free University of Berlin. “They respond to tactile cues, they recognize different wavelengths of light, they listen to chemical signals, they can even talk” through chemical signals. Touch, sight, hearing, speech. “These are sensory modalities and abilities we normally think of as only being in animals,” Dr. Hilker said.
Plants can’t run away from a threat but they can stand their ground. “They are very good at avoiding getting eaten,” said Linda Walling of the University of California, Riverside. “It’s an unusual situation where insects can overcome those defenses.” At the smallest nip to its leaves, specialized cells on the plant’s surface release chemicals to irritate the predator or sticky goo to entrap it. Genes in the plant’s DNA are activated to wage systemwide chemical warfare, the plant’s version of an immune response. We need terpenes, alkaloids, phenolics — let’s move.
(Strong emphasis added.)
There are more examples in the article about the fascinating ways plants respond to their environments.
Now, I don’t think the plant biologists are arguing that plants have minds or self-awareness or capacities of that sort. I’m not even sure that the plant-powers described in the article add up to a capacity to feel pain. But “touch, sight, hearing, and speech” suggest a more active engagement with their surroundings that we’re used to acknowledging.
Whatever plants are up to, you could argue that they’re not hitting the level of sensory modalities and abilities that animals do (or at least, the animals that humans are likely to eat — surely there are some members of the animal kingdom that won’t rise much above the level of the plants).
But this mirrors the argument that the sensory modalities and abilities of animals, while similar to those of humans, fall short and put non-human animals at a relevantly different level. Usually, the line-drawing (or arguing against line-drawing) between humans and non-human animals is cast in terms of the differences in their cognitive capacities (or in the existence of a continuum in cognitive capacities between them).
Technically, since they don’t have brains, plants can’t have any cognitive capacities. But if they manage to have sensory modalities and abilities normally thought of as only being in animals without needing brains, should we really hold their lack of brains against them in our line-drawing?
Because, when it comes to line-drawing about organisms that are potentially nourishing and tasty, the question people often want to answer is “Would it be ethical for me to eat the organisms on this side of the line? Would it be unethical for me to eat the organisms on that side of the line?” If we can’t (ethically) eat animals because they share particular capacities with humans — making them not identical to us, but similar in a morally relevant way — then what should we make of the recognition that plants have capacities of the same sort that put them on the continuum with non-human animals and with us?
Food for thought.