[CarpetBench]

It's an interesting question because it informs where we draw arbitrary lines about what's ok to eat and what's not.

Honestly, and not to just be a smart-ass, but what are the acceptable life forms to eat? We've drawn the arbitrary line that "humans aren't ok to eat," but that's really about the only nearly-unanimous thing we can agree upon.

If we move the line further, to say, "no intelligent animals," then we're stuck defining what "intelligent" means, or how complex a nervous system needs to be before we classify it as intelligent.

Ok, we could say "no animals," but why do, say, sponges deserve protection that we don't extend to algae?

Don't get me wrong: I'm fully in favor of re-examining our modern diet and how other living organisms are included in that. It's just an interesting discussion when we move the line further than "no humans".

[PerfectElement]

I think most animal rights advocates draw the line at sentience. If a being is capable of suffering, then this suffering needs to be justified. If an animal has their own desires, those desires should be taken into consideration.

Intelligence is not a justifiable metric, e.g. some individual humans are less intelligent than some animal species. Yet, we don't use those humans for our own interests.

[CarpetBench]

Even that is a little contentious though, no? Even if we define sentience as the ability to feel pain (which is a bit of a simplification of sentience), the definition of pain seems fairly vague when talking about non-human animals.

AFAIK for certain groups of animals (one that comes to mind is sharks) it's very unlikely they feel anything approximating what we would call pain. Still, I imagine few advocates would say that eating shark meat is ethical behavior.

Certain animals could barely be said to do anything approximating feeling pain besides responding to external stimuli, which plants do as well.

It's a fascinating, complex topic though.

[adamnemecek]

The topic of whether sharks feel pain is contested at best.