Figure 1: A humourous take on plant rights
Society has long recognized the need for human rights and animal rights – to allow all people to live in dignity and enjoy equality of status; and to ensure animals are treated in a humane and compassionate manner. However, a third “right” is about to be added to the list: Plant rights.
A recent development in Switzerland has thrown up this question:Do plants have dignity too? Back in the 1990s, the Swiss constitution was amended in order to defend the dignity of all creatures – including the leafy kind – against unwanted consequences of genetic manipulation. When the amendment was turned into a law, known as the Gene Technology Act, nothing specific about plants was mentioned. However, it included a provision requiring "account to be taken of the dignity of creation when handling animals, plants and other organisms."
But in early 2008, the government asked the Swiss Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology to deliberate on the "dignity" of plants. This panel voiced their finding that the arbitrary killing of flora is morally wrong, published in the report "The Dignity of Living Beings with Regard to Plants". This treatise lays out that vegetation has an inherent value and hence the "need for moral consideration of plants for their own sake", and "decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason" infringes upon their "dignity".
Figure 2: Is pruning plants a punishable crime?
Those who are supportive of the law argue that it is a logical progression in the ongoing effort to curb unsanctioned treatment of all organisms that disregard the sanctity of life. It also goes some way towards meeting the issue of genetic modification of plants meant to improve the qualities of those plants grown for human consumption. With this rule, the days of raging debate regarding the wisdom of creating transgenic plants will be a forgotten memory. No longer will there be the fear of escaped genes contaminating the gene pool, nor will there be trepidation over food safety such as the one Bt food crops sparked off. But to many, this is both specious and incomprehensible.
In their landmark decision, the ethics panel expressed the view that the “dignity” of plants would be encroached upon if they lost their reproductive or adaptive ability as a result of human intervention. However, Dr. Poirier, a molecular biologist at the University of Lausanne, pointed out that traditional plant breeding has already led to widely available sterile fruit, such as seedless grapes, and the triploid modern watermelon. Additionally, many have questioned the validity of plant “dignity” since there is no nervous system in plants for them to have any feelings, which is one of the major substantives for animal rights.
Figure 3: (left) A picture of a triploid, seedless watermelon.
(right) How triploid watermelon plants are bred.
3n plant is a female, fertilized by a male plant.
Because of the odd number of chromosome sets,
no viable seeds will be produced so the plant is seedless.
Meanwhile, scientists in Switzerland rail that their jobs have been made all the more tougher by what they perceive as a superfluous rule. Swiss plant scientists are hoping for the moment that this rule only applies to large-scale field trials, while laboratory experimentations will be spared. Concerns were aired over the extent to which the law’s unilateral crusade against those deemed to have infringed this rule will hobble the development of biotechnology.
In another unusual move, the people of Ecuador also recently voted for a new constitution that is the first to recognize ecosystem rights enforceable in a court of law. Thus, the nation's rivers, forests and air are no longer mere property, but right-bearing entities with "the right to exist, persist and...regenerate."
Figure 4: Do plants have legal status?
Will these spark off a new wave that will carry plant rights to the fore? Is this issue a valid consideration that humans, as “pinnacles” of evolutionary development, have to take into account? Or is it merely a frivolous claim arising from fanatic thinking?
Carrot juice is murder, indeed.
Figure 5: Recognition of plant rights gives rise to the slippery slope problem
