Plant Rights

Part of the reason I am excited to travel to Ecuador this winter is to better gauge what it's like to live within a Constitution that recognizes rights of the natural world.  Ecuador's Constitution changed in 2008 to offer rights to plant life and acknowledge other aspects of the natural world, like rivers and soil.  I've experienced some of a cultural shift towards greater ecology in Costa Rica, where so much of public life is dominated by ideas on sustainable stewardship of land.  National parks close at least one day per week to allow plant and animal life to live unimpeded by human interruption.

Recently I came across an NPR piece profiling the plant's rights movement.  Early in the piece, the author described a debate between a plant's rights advocate and a dissenter, who described plant's rights as a challenge to the animal rights' movement.  The logic is that by acknowledging that plants feel and sense similarly to sentient life, complicates animal advocates urge towards plant-based diets.  I hear that, but I also have a hard time with how quick like-minded people are to argue.  I'm not saying that exploring ideas and controversy shouldn't be encouraged.  However, it seems that similarly-minded people are quick to define boundaries and areas of conflict.

I've been a vegetarian since I was 18 for both moral and health reasons.  I do eat a plant-based diet, but I will eat eggs and dairy, especially if I'm traveling in a part of the world where a strictly plant-based diet is challenging to realize.  I absolutely believe that plants feel.  Certainly they may not feel to the extent a pig or a human does.  There is evidence of human-like behavior in plants ranging from responses to music or chemically responding to other plants living nearby.  I don't think that respecting plants means I won't or can't eat them.  I have complicated feelings around eating eggs and cheese, mainly because of my absolute opposition to the meat and dairy industry in the US.  Ideally, I'd like to either grow or know the source of all my food.  Knowing that my food feels and lives as I do inspires in me a desire to show more reverence and respect for what I eat.  & to advocate just as strenuously for both animal and plant life.

Examining our role in the food cycle doesn't mean we'll arrive at purity.  In my mind, paying attention to consumption and the lives of what (& who) we eat is perhaps a spiritual act.  A reminder that we're all connected within the larger realm of life, that we really are comprised of soil and earth, and to perhaps show greatest gratitude for sustenance by offering rights and respect for all plants, animals, and living forces.