Plants don't feel pain as pain is generally understood. They don't have neural circuits, nociceptors, or brains. We have all those things. Cats, cows, and pigs have all those things.

That said, plants do have defense mechanisms, of course. But that's not the same thing as pain or emotions.

In any case, generally strawberry pickers aren't traumatised in the same way as slaughterhouse workers.

Even if one were to view animal and plant lives as equivalent, around 40% of all crops are grown to feed animals.

Needless to say, it's a lossy conversion. Calorie-wise it's far less efficient for an animal to eat the food and for us to eat the animal, than for us to just eat the plant directly.

So if you really want to reduce un-necessary plant deaths/suffering, then ultimately eating less meat is the way to do it.

> Plants don't feel pain as pain is generally understood.

we don't know that for sure. just to be safe don't eat plants or plant based products too. Eat dirt, that's 100% safe and also feed your children dirt too. The evolution would do the rest and rid your genes from the gene pool