Some of my best friends are vegetarians.
I would not object to a mistress who happens to be a vegan.
But according to Natalie Angier’s article in yesterday’s Times things are a bit more complicated than we thought they would be.
I should have known this. During the opening debate of my guest lectureship at Wageningen University one of the distinguished speakers didn’t make a moral difference between killing animals and “killing” plants.
According to Natalie Angier he might have been right.
This raises the question: how to survive without being an executioner of one sort or the other? Natalie Angier writes: “But before we cede the entire moral penthouse to “committed vegetarians” and “strong ethical vegans,” we might consider that plants no more aspire to being stir-fried in a wok than a hog aspires to being peppercorn-studded in my Christmas clay pot. This is not meant as a trite argument or a chuckled aside. Plants are lively and seek to keep it that way. The more that scientists learn about the complexity of plants — their keen sensitivity to the environment, the speed with which they react to changes in the environment, and the extraordinary number of tricks that plants will rally to fight off attackers and solicit help from afar — the more impressed researchers become, and the less easily we can dismiss plants as so much fiberfill backdrop, passive sunlight collectors on which deer, antelope and vegans can conveniently graze. It’s time for a green revolution, a reseeding of our stubborn animal minds.”

My only objection would be that most people, carnivores included, would have a problem with slaughtering chickens or cows, but they would not hesitate to harvest grapes or strawberries.
Perhaps we should value their “moral sentiments”.
Or we should tell them: “You prey on innocent strawberries, you beast.”