Science

Several years ago, Michael Pollan had a disturbing encounter. The relentlessly curious journalist and author was at a conference on plant behaviour in Vancouver. There, he’d learned that when plants are damaged, they produce an anaesthetising chemical, ethylene. Was this a form of self-soothing, like the release of endorphins after an injury in humans? He asked František Baluška, a cell biologist, if it meant that plants might feel pain. Baluška paused, before answering: “Yes, they should feel pain. If you don’t feel pain, you ignore danger and you don’t survive.”

I imagine that Pollan gulped at that point. I certainly did when I read his account of the meeting in his latest book, A World Appears. Where does it leave our efforts at ethical consumption, if literally everybody hurts – including vegetables?

Thankfully, Baluška seems to be an outlier. “Plants are down with a lot of our eating,” Pollan tells me, over Zoom from his light-filled office in Berkeley, California, a cliff of books on one side and sweeping views across the bay to the Golden Gate Bridge on the other. He’s a genial presence, his owlish glasses and perfectly smooth head making him seem like the archetypal sage, though a rather spry one (he is 71). “A lot of plants are designed to be” – he corrects himself – “they evolved to be eaten. Grasses, for example, need ruminants.” And as another scientist told him, pain is only useful if you can move quickly. “If you’re a plant, pain would not be of any value. You’re aware that something is chewing on you, but pain only works when you can run away.”

In college, I used to think I was very clever in arguing to vegetarians that it's unethical to only eat things that can't "run away." And here it shows up again, nearly 30 years later.