Switzerland's Green Power Revolution: Ethicists Ponder Plants' Rights - WSJ.com

And a few select quotes:

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

And to answer a few possible questions:

No, this isn't a joke.

I wish it was a joke.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

"You Europeans"? Sure, Switzerland is a part of Europe. Still.
(Note, Switzerland is not in the EU, which normally is associated with weird sounding laws. Switzerland is still highly neutral.)

To me it sounds like Switzerland passed quite a few laws recently, on animal and fauna protection and preservation of nature of all sorts, which sounded cool at the time, but weren't played through properly. (The democratic process on such things there is extremely direct if I am not misinformed, which has positive and negative sides...) You'll note that all the quotes have been produced by institutions or people in institutions set in motion by the law as passed (ethics comissions part of the university's administrative powers etc).

Some of their animal protection laws are unique worldwide, too. You can't keep hamsters alone, for example, and aren't allowed to leave your pet alone for more than eight (or was it six?) hours in one go.

You are in the same continent. This is enough. You are all doomed. Doomed, I say!

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

Feh!

I think it just goes to show that it is possible to go to riduculous lengths when trying to do good things. I have almost no respect for organizations like PETA, because so many of their members are so misinformed and have so little respect for fellow humans and their rights. I share some of their values but wish they were more careful to know all the facts before they act. While genetic manipulation is probably a little more dangerous then traditional methods of plant breeding, I think not learning what we can about it would be even more dangerous. But special chemicals to anesthetize a goldfish?, why just not wait until they die on their own, it hardly took anytime at all for the goldfish i had as a kid to meet their end. I'm afraid to even bring one home now. Of course the cats are the main reason.

() ()
( ' ,') "don't eat green potatoes"
(> >) Last words of Mrs. Bertha Sperling
@( )_ )_

The problem seems to lie in the fact that the ethics lumped plants and animals in the same category, which is ridiculous...

I have the same problem here which lumps talking to you guys online in the same ethical category as doing medical experiments on people, so in the research involving humans ethics application I have to detail the physical and mental harms you might encounter in talking to me on the internet and any injections I might give... I know its a lot for you guys to cope with but so far all anyone's complained about is the melting of their frontal lobe from one of my bad jokes.

PhD Student: Research information sheet

There once was a man named Bruce
Who liked to sit on a spruce
He ate lots of chowder
And yelled at me louder:
"I'm talking to YOU, Mrs. Hughes!"
--> The Literary Genius: Mowgli

*lol* *ouch*

Doomed!

Indeed. Or possibly a bit worse...

By this very leap of... idiocy, I'd say, one should also raise the question regarding microbe dignity. And land dignity. Air dignity wouldn't be a bad idea, either. I mean, we should really consider the dignity of all potentially-sentient and reasoning beings - and possibly kill ourselves due to the sheer amount of guilt we collect when breathing. Those poor microbes and bacteria...

Heh. A bit simplistic, I agree. Isn't there something like a psychological research category?

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

Roman, some day I'll lead an army of sentient plants and together we'll overthrow the shackles of human oppression. We'll make you apologize for every genetically modified cob of corn you've ever eaten.

(That is, if I don't starve to death first. Giving up meat has been painful enough, giving up carrots and potatoes sounds pretty undoable )

Friends don't let friends take up scrapbooking!

*prepares weedkiller*

Ah, yes, this is where we come to the Food of the Future!

Protein cubes. We must suffer in the name of ethical treatment of possibly-sentient life.

Anticipate charity by preventing poverty. - Rabbi Moshe ben-Maimon

... hey, you know they'd do the same for us!

Friends don't let friends take up scrapbooking!

You Europeans! Hmmmm. Should the residents of the UK need to be included in these broad generalizations?
Despite being a member of the EEC, we only seem to be European whenever it suits the government to be so.

We are a Free State of British Mushrooms, and as such our individual rights are well looked after by our democratically selected leaders.
That is, if being kept in the dark and fed on a diet of bulls**t fits the criteria of being well cared for.

It is rumoured that British geneticists are secretly working on plans to create a human that can photosynthesize. Then we will only need, depending on the time of day, oxygen or carbon dioxide and sunlight.
No doubt the problems concerning abused flora and brutally assaulted fauna will be solved once and for all.
Except for one of Spiky's jokes once in a while.

I want to die peacefully in my sleep, just like grandpa. Not screaming and panicking like his passengers.
Don't drink and drive from The Lancre Tavern

Hmmm... Funny actually, this reminds me of a debate that occurred on another board whem we were faced with a bad case of Rabid Vegan. This guy was so virulent about animal rights and so far past any kind of reason that he was basically saying that the human race should be wiped from the face of the earth, and would probably have volunteered to begin it himself on the spot if he hadn't been kicked off the board at that point.

Anyway, one of the interesting responses to his ranting was a guy who said "well, what proof do you have that vegetables have no soul, no feelings, no sense of self? Just because they don't express it like animals do, who are you to say that it is less cruel to pull a carrot out of the ground than to pull a fish out of water? A few hundred years ago, the world's scientists were convinced that black people had no soul and therefore did not deserve any consideration. Children's rights and animal rights have changed immensely over even just the last century, animal suffering in 1880 was hardly the issue it was in 1980, so who's to say one day we won't discover that plants too feel pain?"

I'm summing it up a bit, the post was a good couple of pages long, but it did kind of make me think, at the time, and still does a bit...

Damn Spider pig

Well, If we believed in the sentience and souls of plant-life, then there would be the whole moral debate over who has more of a right to be here. After all, if people morally concede that plants and animals should not be consumed, then we should all just lay down and become compost for them...what could we possibly live off?

*The rabid vegan thing reminds me of this old movie where people invited a certain guest to dinner, and decided whether that person should live or die, depending on their conduct and point of view during the evening. Most of the time they're killed, and and buried in the garden, where the massive tomatoes start growing. Can never remember the name of that movie. One of the dinner guests was a woman who was vegan, yet didnt eat vegetables because she said they felt pain...

-=Happiness is a journey, not a destination=-
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