It's a huge issue of our times that as a species we fail to recognise. Vegetables of all kinds have the capacity to love and care and want to live a life free of harm and cruelty that most never think about, perhaps as we're too busy caring about the animals that our purchases demand be bred into existence. Scientists point to the fact that vegetables lack many of the basic requirements to be sentient like animals. After all, they have no biological or evolutionary reason to feel pain, seeing as they have no ability to react or move away from the cause of the pain, but this does not mean that they don't feel pain in the same way as us and animals. Just because vegetables also lack a brain, heart, lungs, kidneys, liver, spleen, eyes, mouth, nose, pain receptors or a central nervous system, among many other things humans share with their loved animal counterparts - this does not mean that vegetables can't think for themselves and have a unique experience of their own life full of personality. Carrots grow together not because they are in the same soil with the same nutrients and growing conditions, but because they band together and achieve all that they dream of through teamwork and coordination. Any society will flourish when made up of individuals that are working towards a common goal, and vegetables are no different.
What I ask of you is this - next time you bring your shopping home, pick out any vegetable you bought and just sit with it for a moment. Feel the presence of the vegetable in your hand, give it a nice stroke as if you would a dog, cat, pig or rabbit - and you tell me that vegetable isn't feeling the joy of your warm loving embrace and company in the same way that that animal would. The fact that we then chop these vegetables up and boil and roast them without the use of any anesthetic is truly horrifying. Animals are treated to electrocution baths, CO2 gas chambers, bolt guns to the skull, or hung upside down in an attempt to stun them before they are ultimately slaughtered by a knife to the throat. It's a travesty that vegetables aren't treated with such compassion.
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