theveganabolitionist:

Uh, but plants aren’t sentient like animals, so there’s that.

guayamas:

I’m vegan because, even though both react to pain, I think it’s acceptable to kill plants for food but not animals.* I guess this makes me a specieist. THOUGHTS PLS

*and because plants actually are nutritious contrary to animal products, and because crop growing is far less damaging to the environment than animal farming.

Sentience is a red herring (ugh, no pun intended). Drawing the line as to where sentience begins and ends is so difficult as to be impossible, and would probably leave out species which do feel pain and can, in certain ways, think. Instead the goal should be to do no unnecessary harm to other living beings, including plants. The ultimate goal, for all of us, should be a Jain like diet where we ear nothing but annual plants and fruit which does not harm the source. Until we can get to that point, however, veganism provides us a necessary stepping stone. Moreover, because of the massive amount of plant matter it takes to fees farmed animals we are still killing far leas plants with a plant based diet than we would be with a carnivorous diet.

Tl;dr Sentience is a very bad measuring stick for morality, but we’re still doing alright when you see the big picture.