USDA Recommends Three to Five Murders a Day

           I am a murderer. On a good day, I commit murder three to five times. On a bad day, I just open a box of Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

According to a study done by a team of scientists from the Blaustein Institute for Desert Research at Ben-Gurion University in Israel we need to rethink what we consider murder. The peer-reviewed research, revealed that a pea plant subjected to drought conditions communicated its stress to other such plants, with which it shared its soil. In other words, the pea plant was able to tell the other plants…we are having a drought. (SIDE NOTE: No word if the pea plant then issued a series of drought initiatives to conserve water)

Now the question of the day is: What should be considered the ethical treatment of plants, considering we now know they communicate?

Is it morally permissible to submit to total instrumentalization living beings that, though they do not have a central nervous system, are capable of basic learning and communication? Should their swift response to stress leave us coldly indifferent, while animal suffering provokes intense feelings of pity and compassion? –Michael Marder, New York Times (If Peas Can Talk, Should We Eat Them?)

Wait, I’ll answer that. 

Then God said, “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you; and to every beast of the earth and to every bird of the sky and to every thing that moves on the earth which has life, I have given every green plant for food”; and it was so. –Genesis 1:29-30

And, then I wonder: Who paid for this study? How much more effectively could each dollar have been used? But hey, if the vegetables are now communicative, perhaps we should ask them their official stance on the Tomato.  Fruit or Veggie?

Have Another...it's on the house!