If you thought the animal rights movement could not get any more insane after the Spanish government granted apes rights, here is a new low:
The Federal Ethics Committee of the Swiss government has unanimously concluded that the right of plants should be recognized. Their conclusions (PDF) of their statement on the “moral consideration of plants for their own sake” includes the following:
- “Harm caused to plants”, including the “decapitation of wild flowers” is “morally impermissible”
- Plants should be “excluded for moral reasons from absolute ownership”
- Genetic engineering is acceptable only as long as their “reproductive ability and adaptive ability are ensured” and “always involve[s] consideration of conserving and safeguarding the natural, i.e. not man-made, network of relationships”
- The “patenting of plants as such is morally impermissible and contradicts the dignity of living beings” [minority opinion]
- “the complete instrumentalisation [i.e. domestrication] of plants – as a collective, as a species, or as individuals – requires moral justification”
You can laugh now, but not so long ago, the vast majority of people of people would have laughed at the idea of “animal rights.” To the extent that governments recognize the rights of any animals, plants, or rocks to exist for their own sake, they equally restrict the rights of human beings, since human civilization is only possible by the manipulation, exploitation, and appropriation of nature to suit the selfish interests of human beings. The call to recognize animal or plant rights is ultimately nothing less than a call for the xenocide of the entire human race. For more see the ARI mini-site Environmentalism and Animal Rights