[c22]

It sounds like your moral framework would include bugs as sacrosanct as well? I do wonder, then, why you are so quick to dismiss the feelings of plants? I guess because they move in time-steps out of sync with your own? But if you take a shade-loving plant and put it in the direct sun it will turn its leaves away so they don't get burnt. If you stab a tree it will exude a coagulating sap and heal the damage with a scar. Plants have no immune system comparable to ours, but they still remember and respond differently to viruses they've been exposed to in the past. These actions are clearly in response to the environment. Since my own pain-avoidance and healing actions are very similar and also in response to the environment I consider this evidence that a chemical analog of my pain response must be occurring in plants, however alien the experience may be to me as a mammal. Whatever plants feel, there are other moral issues surrounding the food chain that cannot be solved by simply adopting a plant-based diet. I think it is more arbitrary than you are willing to imply.