Do Plants Feel Pain? How To Debunk The Common Vegan Argument

The question of whether or not plants feel pain is something that many vegans will be familiar with being asked. As veganism skyrockets in popularity all over the world, so too have attempts to debunk and discredit the lifestyle’s teachings. Anti-vegans often use the “but plants feel pain…” argument while attempting to prove veganism is pointless. After all, if plants do feel pain like animals, doesn’t that make the argument in favor of veganism redundant?

The idea that plants feel pain stems from a number of studies that show that plants can react to physical damage and environmental stressors in sophisticated ways, such as releasing chemicals to deter predators or signaling distress through biochemical pathways. Some research, like the sounds of caterpillars chewing eliciting defensive responses in plants, has been sensationalized in popular media, leading to misinterpretations about plants experiencing pain similar to animals.

But there are many reasons why the “do plants feel pain?” argument falls flat. These include the fact that farmed animals eat plants too, and that plants have neither a brain nor central nervous system.

In a YouTube video titled “Plants Feel Pain Debunked,” vegan science writer Mic the Vegan examines all the reasons why the argument is flawed. Find the key points and watch the full video below.

Do plants feel pain? Responding to the argument

‘Two wrongs don’t make a right’

Mic starts by pointing out that, even if plants did feel pain like animals, to argue that we should continue eating animals would be flawed as “two wrongs don’t make a right.”

He explains that the argument wrongly suggests that if plants feel pain (wrong #1), then it justifies causing pain to animals (wrong #2). He compares this flawed logic to someone saying: “since we cause animals pain, it’s somehow okay to torture a person.”

“The plants feel pain argument invents its own wrong that plants suffer, and then builds a two wrongs make a right fallacy on top of that. Amazing work of the imagination,” he says.

Definition and nature of pain

Next up, Mic moves on to what he called “basic biology.” He then points out that plants do not have pain receptors or a nervous system like animals do. “They have no machinery for registering pain,” he explains.

He then goes on to clarify what pain means. He says that the definition of pain in this context is “defined as physical suffering or discomfort caused by illness or injury.”

This definition, he says, implies that the being experiencing pain must possess emotion states. MIC disputes the notion that plants are capable of such states. “I challenge you to find a scientist that believes that plants have emotions.”

Evolutionary perspective on pain

He then points out that plants feeling pain would “evolutionary pointless.” This is because animals have an evolutionary reason for feeling pain, in that they need to be able to “react immediately to survive.”

Unlike animals, plants are not mobile and do not need to respond to immediate threats through movement.

If plants could suffer…

A farmed cow eating grass — Adobe Stock Huge amounts of plants are eaten by farmed animals

Mic then goes on to put forward to hypothetical situation that plants do feel pain like animals. Even if they did, he argues, being vegan would still be the most ethical choice.

There are around 92 billion land animals killed a year for food, and all of them need feeding. A huge amount of forest is being destroyed to make way for both the animals themselves and farms that grow crops to feed them. If plants did feel pain, we would still minimize harm by eating them, rather than feeding them to animals before killing and eating them. Mic points out that it takes 13 pounds of grain or 30 pounds of forage to create one pound of cow flesh.

“Eating animals would theoretically cause a lot more plant pain due to the massive amount of plants that animals consume than if you were to just eat the plants directly,” he says.

Humans need plants to survive

Mic points out that humans are obligate plant eaters, meaning that we need to eat plants to survive. “Humans must inflict a degree of ‘plant pain’ in order to survive,” he says. “But we do not require animal derived foods to survive. So all the animal suffering is entirely pointless.”