A new amended law in Switzerland protects the dignity of vegetation.
A law protecting the dignity of plants? Laugh if you will. I’m down on my knees in respect and awe. At last the Western World is realizing the dire importance of taking other species into account.
Recently, the Swiss Parliament asked a panel of philosophers, lawyers, geneticists and theologians to determine the meaning of dignity when it pertains to plants.
Lo and Behold, the team published a treatise on “the moral consideration of plants for their own sake.” The treatise established that vegetation has innate value and that it is morally wrong to partake in activities such as the “decapitation of wildflowers at the roadside without rational reason.”
Over a decade ago, an amendment was added to the Swiss constitution in order to defend the dignity of all creatures — including vegetation — against unwanted repercussions of genetic engineering. The amendment was turned into law and is known as the Gene Technology Act. However the law itself didn’t say anything specific about plants, until recently, when the law was amended to include them.
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The obvious question at hand: how does this new ruling affect the production of genetically modified organisms?
Beat Keller is a molecular biologist at the University of Zurich. Keller recently asked permission of the government to conduct a field trial of a genetically modified wheat bred with a resistance to fungus. In order to actually gain permission to go ahead with the trial, he needed to hash out the potential threats to the dignity of the wheat.
The majority of the panel agrees that genetically modified plants are ok, “as long as their independence, i.e., reproductive ability and adaptive ability, are ensured.” In other words, no forced sterility and terminator genes.
And Keller did, in the end, get to plant his GMO grain.
“Where does it stop?” asks Yves Poirier, a molecular biologist at the laboratory of plant biotechnology at the University of Lausanne. “Should we now defend the dignity of microbes and viruses?”
And even though I think it’s a great law, where does it stop? How humiliated is a boiled potato? A peeled carrot? Corn turned into a lowly, tortilla chip meant for dipping?
Source: Wall Street Journal
Photo: Wikimedia under a Creative Commons Lisence
I was raised near 100 acres of Flowers and Strawberries It was beautiful rolling hills and rows and rows of colorful flowers all grown by MAN and they harvested them and grew more..we used to get 4 growing cycles a year. Flowers offer us so much pleasure and so do Strawberries…they were grown nurtured and harvested by man. This is exactly the way God intended us to behave…This liberal BS is really no more than a senseless attack on man kind…Save the spotted owl stupidity…in doing so they refuse to cut old growth but because of that California burns down every years hundreds and hundreds of acres of Forest..where does the spotted owl live?…one nest was recently found under the hood of an antique 1932 Ford Pickup that was left in the field…they not only found that the spotted owl made a home but several rodents found refuge under the truck and as well as shade….So really folks get a F’ing life…everything on this planet if moving forward except these leftist moronic control freaks…that do nothing but cause trouble…
LOL
Stop GMO’s but this law for plants is absurd and frankly scary. It is mankind’s hands to repair what we have done.
Stop GMO’s but this law for plants is absurd and frankly scary. It is mankind’s hands to repair what we have done.
I eat plants and turn them into poop, a quite literal degradation of their dignity, especially once they wind up in the sewage system.
Is this now a federal offense? =P
I eat plants and turn them into poop, a quite literal degradation of their dignity, especially once they wind up in the sewage system.
Is this now a federal offense? =P
Poison Ivy would love this!
Poison Ivy would love this!
I have been working with flower essences since 1984, professionally as a therapy since 1986. This therapy relies on the consciousness within plants being transferred to water as the conductor of consiousness.
The effects of flower essences are miraculous! This includes swiftly reversing cancer, brain tumours, leukemia, debilitating emotional states, etc. The effectiveness occurs in adult humans, children, babies, animals, and even other plants – so there is no placebo effect.
Cleve Backster's ongoing research , since 1962, has proven the existence of consciousness within plants, and even bacteria. Why do we, as a species, claim the sole right to consciousness? Very few plants destroy their environement as we do. Plants have evolved way beyond our present capacity. The flower is the spiritual emanation of the plant, in 3-D.
Sunflowers will turn to follow the sun BY CHOICE: nothing else makes that happen. It is difficult for us as a species to let go of our ego-centric view of a world that was put here for us alone. Perhaps this has been due to the misinterpretation or mis-translation of certain religious scriptures.
The human being is the infant of the natural world, and like the 2-year-old child, we only see things from our tiny perspective of "self". The world is ALIVE with consciousness!
Actually it has been proven time and time again that plants can be adversely effected by the emotional environment around them. Up to and including scientists singing to them (or to take out the CO2 factor- playing recordings) in different musical genres, yelling at them and berating them, praising them and then of course the control plants that just receive basic nutrients needed to survive. The plants that thrived and grew tallest with the most flourish were the ones that were praise and also the ones that listened to music.
http://www.plantenergy.uwa.edu.au/education/Experiment%20plant%20sound.pdf
http://www.edubook.com/do-plants-really-respond-to-music/11846/
and of course my favorite Mythbusters
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MythBusters_%282004_season%29
I can understand why someone as rude as yourself, Heri, would not comprehend the meaning of the word "dignity". Also, plantlife is the foundation of our entire eco-system. Everything that breathes has life, and everything that has life has consciousness… Maybe try breathing a little more deeply.
It seems to question why but I know as a grower of plants that the control of vegetation outside of agriculture is beyond reason at times. The destruction I have witnessed is deplorable. All in the name of biodiversity and conservation. Yikes. Let me guess, nature made a mistake and I must correct it. How about-the vegetation is all wrong-its going bad we need to bomb it back to 1491. Integration doesn’t happen until we get rid of the plants we call weeds. I am not talking about a flower garden either. My favorite quote from a phd forester at a native plant conference-“never mind there is no scientific difference between native and non native we must kill these evil plants.” No wonder the Swiss came up with this.
Oddly enough, abortion on demand in the first trimester is legal in Switzerland and paid for by the state. Yet plants’ dignity is protected under law. It’s not just the clocks that are cuckoo.
This is the first step forward, but you must now recognize the rights of computers, and your moral obligations towards them. NO LONGER should you be allowed to simply open their cases and mess with their insides in an undignified manner – this activity should only be performed by specialists who have sworn a hypocratic-style oath. NO LONGER should you be allowed to simply throw out an old CD ROM when it stops working – it is YOUR responsibility to repair it, no matter what the cost.
Oh, you should also respect dirt and stop treading in it.
We’re so done as a species it’s ridiculous. Are you kidding me? This is what we’re bothering ourselves with in the Western World? There’s nothing more pressing than the “dignity” of plants? We’re just done…
Anyone ever see, ‘the happening’? Maybe the swiss are trying to get in good with the plants; For when they release their neurotoxins and make everyone kill themselves. Only the swiss will survive.lol
Loony loony loony loony. The lunatics are running the asylum, and other lunatics are cheering them on. Poor little loonies, thinking that plants have “dignity”. What’s next, protecting the “dignity” of rocks, of poo?
I just put a dunce cap on one of my houseplants and made it sit there in front of the other plants. Then I pointed and laughed. Really hard.
Wait, is that the Swiss police at my door?
Seriously, who thinks this stuff up? Humiliation of plants? How? You can go to a forest and make fun of every plant you see, and what’s going to happen? Nothing.
What? This is the ultimate stupidest thing I have yet to hear from you tree huggers. I mean even if you have a genuine interest in saving plants and wildlife from extinction, this kind of thing is what non-conservationalists can point to and apply the label ‘ecological mumbo jumbo’ thereby hurting real issues like species protection.
Get a grip on reality here folks or you’ll end up destroying all you are working for!
The only actual good thing about this article is that the law bans creation of plants that cannot reproduce. This is in itself a step to the right direction away from big seed-companies for example creating wheat that cannot be sustained by the farmer by saving seeds for the next year.
I think it’s time to hone in on the vegans as the plant-murderers they are. They intentionally focus their violence on plants, explicitly excluding animals, humans, or even the by-products thereof. They are plantist. They are anti-plant terrorists who kill and even eat plants en masse. Some even go so far as to not even kill them before they eat them, but horrifically eat them RAW!! This must be stopped! Plants deserve better!
The only reason why crap like this pops up every now and then is because humans don’t have to hunt and gather their food anymore, so we seem to develop ourselves some other problems like thinking whether plants can feel and whether killing a bug is a murder, vegans fall into this same category.. soon we can’t eat anything anymore because meat is murder and plants should not be killed. This is just absolutely ridiculous stuff.. don’t you people have any understanding how many plants and seeds are bred every year.. hardly we can kill them all just by decapitating them. Why don’t you go waving your biological stability flags in front of the offices of the companies who really are destroying species by transporting stuff from abroad and so on.. I mean.. god dammit, to LIKE stuff like this you must have an IQ less than a plant.
When an internet “journalist” includes a sentence like “I’m down on my knees in respect and awe” in the opening paragraph of her article, anything else she writes should be taken with a (BIG!) grain of salt.
So, looking at her bio (linked on this paged) we discover “Meg holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has published two books of political/environmental poetry.”
Creative writing? Political/environmental poetry? How about some journalism Meg? Your flair for the dramatic rivals even Guinnevere (see above)
Remind me to not live in Switzerland. So they can’t eat plants, because that would be an indignation to the poor plants; surely they can’t eat animals, because that’s even more of an indignation. They can’t drink water because of the microbes living in it — must not interfere with other species’ right to exist, after all — and the same with breathing! After they all die of suffocation, dehydration, and/or starvation, perhaps some more rational people will move in.
Seriously, *down on your knees with awe*?!? I agree that we shouldn’t continue raping the planet as we have done this past hundred or so years, but talking about the “dignity” of plants doesn’t help that, nor make sense. Actually combating the problems that exist is a much better solution, than sitting around a table, sipping cappucinos, churning out ridiculous reports that only make it look like something’s being done. In fact, all these reports, and all the excess paperwork now needed for people to carry on living there in Switzerland either produce more physical paperwork (but what about the dignity of the trees!), or more digital paperwork (but what about the carbon emissions from the power plants!). Stupid, stupid, stupid.
What is wrong with having respect for something? If it goes too far who does it hurt? No one. I see nothing wrong with it.
So, let me get this straight. Plants have rights. Unborn children do not. Decapitating a plant is wrong. Aborting a child is not.
This is one messed up world.
Last week I cut my lawn and applied weedkiller to my driveway.
The screams of a million dead souls still resonates in my brain, a deathshriek ringing with untold pain and agony..
gunnivere: that may be true but in the actuality of enforcement, it WILL turn into a motherlode of material for stand up comedians.
jeezuz. moral dignity of a plant??? where do they come up with this stuff? you DON’T do it this way to protect huge swaths of forest from wanton destruction. what you do is to regulate the forestry industry as is done in some places.
‘humiliation’ of an amoeba next on the roster.
Being opposed to waste is good.
Imbuing plants with rights or dignity is simply insane.
Think about it next time you need antibiotics to save your life (WMD in plant-speak).
Things like plants cannot be humiliated because they have no cognitive ability. Whats more is the idea of inherent value in ANYTHING is ludicrous as all value is given to other things via HUMAN perception of the object in questions personal value to the man in question. Value is an internalized concept and a completely subjective evaluation. NOTHING has inherent value outside of MANS evaluation.
Surely I cannot be the only one who sees this as a huge stepping stone to controlling the peoples of Switzerland’s very food supply, starving them or placing them on strict government approved diets for their own good and of course for the ‘sanctity’ of the damn plants.
Is this why we have to pretend to listen to Jenny McCarthy?
Our world is in peril. Gaia, the spirit of the Earth, can no longer stand the terrible destruction plaguing our planet. She gives five special rings to five special young people. From Africa, Kwame with the power of earth. From the North America, Wheeler with the power of fire. From the Soviet Union, Linka with the power of wind. From Asia, Gi with the power of water and from South America, Ma-Ti with the power of heart.
I killed thousands of beans this weekend, and an unknown number of corn kernels via boiling that might have sprouted on their own and grown into productive members of an ear. Should I have not done that?
I shall be oh so worried about the dignity of weeds growing in my lawn and driveway as I spray weed killer on them. Perhaps I shall allow for a funeral afterwards. What a load of fertilizer!!! I needed a good laugh today, and think I have met my quota for the year. Suppose I shall give Peas a chance and shall provide a therapist for them before I place them in a pot of boiling water. What is the proper protocol when picking fruits off of the vine? How can one harvest vegetables without having them loosing their dignity as they are pulled up out of the ground having the sun shine on them in places previously covered over? The poor naked vegetables on display at the market, I can almost hear their screams.
Is this article from The Onion?
So, Guinnevere… what do you eat?
“Wanton Destruction For No Good Reason”. Sounds good. What does that mean exactly?
If I have a reason, “I’m angry”, can I destroy plants? How about animals? How about people?
Any why are plants more special than bacteria? If I have some diseases, say smallpox, I could live my entire life with it. Isn’t it against the dignity of bacteria to mass slaughter them?
Dust has dignity too. We should also respect the feelings of Kelloggs Frosties and nobody should ever insult colors. Laws should be passed to this effect.
And yes, I am totally serious.
That is fascinating. I don’t think “dignity” would sell too well here in the U.S. We Americans are followers, not reasoners, so if a plant dignity law were to have a chance in this country it should not come with an explanation. Explanations are elitist. Following is doubleplusgood.