this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2024
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How do you measure how much misery a cod feels?
Edit: sorry that was a bit snarky. I don't think you're completely off the mark but I would think an animal needs at least a nervous system to experience pain, so there are categories to consider and it may be morally virtuous to abstain from eating some animals but not necessarily immoral, and we should be careful to anthropomorphize other animal emotional states.
So fish have nociceptors, and a brain that connects to them, and they avoid painful stimuli. They have analgesic response systems in their brain to dull painful stimuli. Even the most cautious interpetation of misery would include pain, so I would not kill and eat it. Fish display sentience, therefore it is immoral to kill them for pleasure.
Plants process pain and can communicate with other plants.
By your logic it is immoral to mow your grass.
No serious study suggests plants feel pain. They do not have a brain or central nervous system. At most, they respond to stimuli.
Many more plants "die" for animal feeding than with a vegan diet.
If you're worried about grass pain, you should focus more on the animals that DO have nociceptors, central nervous systems and brains, and the ability to feel fear that you subject them too, purely for taste preference.
except they clearly have no problem with eating things that feel pain.
I've read some studies that talk about how cabbages in a patch release a warning scent when one of them is being harvested. The scent actually propagates, and even non harvested cabbages release the scent further down the patch to warn other cabbages.
That would be response to stimuli, which doesn't indicate sentience. Interesting though.