Is it a heresy, or at least savoring of heresy, to say there was death before Adam?

Let us just say it is wrong to say there was death before Adam. Some try to allow death before Adam by pointing to plants, as Jimmy Akin does, arguing that even if the animals did not die, the plants died because we had to eat them for food. But that is not the case, because according to the Bible's own definition of life, plants do not die. They are made of organic material like animals and humans, but they do not have the breath of life. You see that phrase in Genesis, where God breathes life into man; plants do not have it, so in Scripture they are not considered alive in the sense that animals and humans are, and you cannot murder or kill them. Beyond that there is no death, because the whole idea that there was death before Adam defeats God's revelation. Scripture ties humans and animals together: whenever humans are judged for their sin, the animals are judged too, as in the flood, and Paul says in Romans 8 that the whole creation groans because of the curse. Death is the result of original sin, which is what the Church has taught. Paul says in Romans 5:12 that by one man sin entered the world, and death through sin. Spiritual death happened to Adam immediately; physical death took time, but the mechanism to age and die was given the moment he ate the fruit. Once you ruin the story by putting death before the fall, usually to fit an evolutionary scheme into Genesis, nothing makes sense anymore.