Dozens of protesters occupied a turkey barn on an Alberta Hutterite colony four years ago as part of a protest against animal agriculture.
It was an example of what livestock producers have had to put up with in recent years as a small portion of the population tries to force the rest of us to not eat meat.
It’s a challenge that grain farmers don’t have to face, but I wonder if those days could one day come to an end.
Farmers who grow crops may be lulled into a sense of complacency because vegetarians and vegans — radical or not — eat the things they grow.
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However, there is a splinter movement in the vegetarian universe that goes far beyond eating only plants.
These folks won’t eat any plant that had to be killed first — in other words, harvested with a combine or yanked out of a garden.
They’re called fruitarians, and while they come in a wide range of belief systems, at their core is a desire to eat only plant food that can be harvested without harming the plant.
This basically means eating only fruit, nuts and seeds, but some fruitarians won’t eat seeds because they contain future plants. Others believe in consuming only plants that spread their seeds when eaten, although I can’t quite figure out how that’s supposed to work.
And then there are nutarians, who eat only nuts.
Nutritionists have quite a bit to say about the health risks involved in following these kinds of diets, but I figure consenting adults can do whatever the heck they want as long as they’re not bothering anyone else.
However, it does seem to be part of a weird trend that attributes sentience to plants.
I don’t agree with the extreme actions of animal rights activists, but I can sort of understand where they are coming from. But plants? My goodness.
I recently came across a group that was offering a free song called PhotoSymphony that was “designed to support healthy plant growth.”
It conjured up images of farmers building Rolling Stones concert-level sound systems at the edges of their canola fields.
I’ve heard of this being done in dairy barns, but doing it in a canola field would be taking things to an entirely new level.
Let’s hope the plant rights activists find something better to do.
