We may not have reason to think so about poultry, but it does have me rethinking how I feel about eating it. Obviously, I've long felt that way about livestock and I've never been tempted to eat octopus with any frequency, but given what we've learned about them, I won't eat them either. Ditto higher aquatic mammals.

Please don't tell me that we've identified beans and veggies as sentient beings.

Cute, playful little parrot.

Plants respond with defenses when they perceive or experience existential threats. We don't share that kind of consciousness, so perhaps we can't call it "pain" or empathize with them as we are learning to do with forms of life that are closer to our own.

"Do Plants Feel Pain?"

But our lack of perception and/or ability to empathize with forms of life whose consciousness is very different from ours is not an inherent justification for awarding them a preferred category as "consumable" over cute critters with names. It just makes us feel more comfortable.

The reality is that ALL life lives by consuming other life. Our task is to be mindful about it, learn, make informed choices, and above all, do our consuming in ways that respect other forms of life, be they chickens or chiogga beets.

ALL forms of "factory" agriculture- not just feedlots and forcing pens, but monocropping and drenching plants with chemicals and degrading THEIR sources of food in the soils they depend on- are forms of heedless cruelty that our species has to outgrow.

sadly,
Bright