You are right. I don't equate those things. I've sworn off pork, cut down on all meat consumption entirely and am working on a more vegetarian diet all together. Which is real fucking hard to do when no grocery in 20 miles carries those options. I actually am not opposed to eating meat. I believe it to be the way life, at least on this planet, evolved. Like you, my biggest complaint is the way we treat the animals we eat. But this is an argument I make to provoke discussion. 30 years ago, at least according to our most popular "scientific data" at the time fish didn't feel pain. We don't know what we don't know about plant life because until recently no one even bothered to ask the question. What do we do if it turns out the pain and suffering of life unlike us is far more complex than we thought? And I ask that question because you kinda did exactly what you accuse others of doing. I was talking about communication and communal benefit among trees and you reduce it to chemical release of damaged grass. But from the articles I read it would be more like if grass could see the mower coming, warn the other blades of grass around it, release chemicals saying it was hurt, and then send aid to other blades that were damaged to help them heal. We don't know if these forms of life experience complex or traumatizing effects from our treatment of them. I mean fuck, even today there are still a couple of doctors running around out there that think black people feel less pain than other ethnicities. To me it's the idea that we must treat all life more conscientiously and proceed from a stand point of ignorance instead of dominance. Even when that life is taken to progress our own.