the dignity of plants

There are difficult legal, moral and ethical issues concerning the treatment of human, animal and plant life. Here's a nugget from News of the Weird on how Switzerland handles plant life.


A provision in Switzerland's constitution recognizes the "dignity" of "animals, plants and other organisms," and a federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Gene Technology declared in an April report that vegetation has "inherent worth" and that humans cannot exercise "absolute ownership" over it but must treat it morally, measured case-by-case. For example, the committee said a farmer's mowing his field is acceptable, but not the arbitrary severing of a wildflower's bloom. The committee would permit genetic engineering of flora, since plants would still retain the "autonomy" to reproduce on their own. [Agence France-Presse, 4-14-08, Nature 4-23-08]