PLANTS HAVE FEELINGS AND AGRICULTURE KILLS ANIMALS

A common argument I hear from people showing resistance towards adopting a Vegetarian/Vegan lifestyle is that there will always be violence and because you will always be contributing to violence on some level, there is no point. Moreover, as plants are alive and have feelings, you’re just as morally culpable for participating in their consumption.
Intuitively we all know there is a distinction between animals and plants. Picking an apple from a tree creates no disharmony within us however slitting the throat of a lamb would be unsettling even for the most hardened souls.

Plant foods are most often foods that are freely released by certain plants and sometimes benefit from our consumption by having their seeds propagated e.g. apples, oranges, plumbs, cherries, olives, mangoes, peaches, cucumbers etc. are the fruits of trees. Wheat, oats, quinoa etc. are the fruits and seeds of cereal grasses.
Legumes such as soy, chickpeas, lentils are the seeds of leguminous plants and broccoli, cauliflower, brussellsprouts, artichokes etc. are seed bearing flowers.

Plants are indeed alive and respond to stimuli. They are not however, by definition sentient beings. They do not have a central nervous system which denotes a brain. Neither do they have pain receptors. Human beings cannot survive without the consumption of plant matter therefore doing so is unavoidable, as opposed to eating meat which is barring the most extenuating circumstances always done out of pleasure.

If, however you do believe that plants are sentient, then the consequence of eating animals causes more harm as you are not only directly culpable for the death of the animal you are supporting to have slaughtered and consumed, but indirectly responsible for all the plants that animal consumed during its life for it to be raised and slaughtered.

To quote the renowned ethologist Konrad Lorenz, "Anyone who cannot see the difference between chopping up a dog & chopping up a lettuce should commit suicide for the benefit of society."

Proponents of this argument will often argue that if we shift from a meat-based agriculture to a plant-based agriculture, we will inevitably displace and possibly kill sentient animals when we plant vegetables. The problem with this argument is there are actually very few small rodents that are killed through agriculture (See http://www.animalvisuals.org/projects/data/1mc/) and you're trading the potential to do harm for the certainty of doing harm.

To presume that paying for the death of a sentient being or supporting an organization that definitively slaughters animals is morally on par with purchasing veggies which will require the clearing of land and the possible unintentional slaughter of animals as an unintended consequence, is an appeal to potentiality fallacy and thus a demonstrably false comparison from a moral standpoint based on first principles.

Veganism/Vegetarianism are not perfect but just because one cannot completely remove oneself from violence does not mean one should not strive to do so. The Art of Ahimsa is to minimize harm to a small as degree as possible. It is not about perfection. History has shown that there has always been violence that has been embedded through tradition within a society however the nature of our nature is not to be constrained by our nature, it is to evolve. We should not only be educating each other but encouraging others to bring themselves to a higher standard of Peace, Non Violence and Agape.