Native cultures often thank the plants they take from; I think I've even read that they can apologize - so obviously, they think that the plants have a capacity for suffering. Read about animism. The idea, whether you eat animals or plants, is that suffering or not, there is some kind of symbiotic relationship.
For example with plains indians such as Lakota, and the buffalo. Yes they hunted them, but only for what they needed to survive, and they made use of every part of those animals. At the same time, they protected the buffalo and saw them as sacred.
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