I was only gone for a day or two...

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while you can't prove a negative, it is possible to find evidence for a positive claim. so, very much, you don't know that. the truest thing anyone can say is that there is not a conclusive study that supports the claim.
- Even if plants might feel pain, we are certain that animals feel pain. Also if you think for whatever reason that plants feel pain, then, well, a vegan diet uses less plants because its a more efficient food source. Plants feeling pain, whether true or false, isn't an argument against veganism in any way.
  
  the crux of the argument that they might feel pain is not that it is wrong, but that it is inevitable, so it cannot be wrong
  
  I had a stroke while reading this. Can you clarify what you meant?
  
  when somebody raises the objection that plants feel pain, it's not an appeal to hypocrisy. it's a statement of fact whether we can prove it or not. and it's the premise of a larger argument. that argument goes
  pain is an inevitable facet of food production
  food production is a moral good
  an inevitable facet of food production cannot make food production bad
  therefore
  food production remains a moral good
  your rebuttal was targeted at defending against the accusation of hypocrisy, but the devastating bit has nothing to do with the hypocrisy.
  
  Pain might be an inevitable facet of food production (crop deaths). But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try to eliminate as much pain as we reasonably can.
  Pain is an inevitable facet of surgery
  Surgery is a moral good
  an inevitable facet of surgery cannot make surgey bad
  surgery remains a moral good
  The fact that pain is inevitable to surgery doesn't mean we should stop giving patients anesthesia and pain medication.
  
  there is an obvious case for easing the pain of humans, but not so much for our food.
  
  So it just loops back to speciesism then? You don't care about the pain animals face, only humans?
  
  as kant said, cruelty is bad. you ought not kick a dog, for instance, but there is no contradiction in animal agriculture itself. if some operations are acting cruelly, we should admonish them. otherwise, tehre is no reason to believe non-human animals can participate in an ethical society, so there is no reason to include them in our ethical systems.
  
  tehre is no reason to believe non-human animals can participate in an ethical society, so there is no reason to include them in our ethical systems.
  But we do. You mentioned how you ought not to kick a dog, for instance. The difference is that we treat some animals as companions while treating others as resources for exploitation. If you truly believe that there is no reason to be ethical to animals, why not kick that dog? Or maybe boil it alive?
  
  why not kick that dog?
  again, kant discourages cruelty as a practice toward non-human animals, as it may lead to practicing cruelty toward people. that's it. it's not including them in our morality.

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