On Mon, 17 May 2021 19:33:29 +0100, "Commander Kinsey"
wrote:

snip

To most people "sentient" means they have feelings, not just they can react to stimuli. A plant can do that.

Sort of.

Being able to detect pain is only good if you can then do something
about it, as when you sick a knife in a cow and it runs away. It runs
away because it feels pain and if domesticated is unlikely to attack
(unlike doing the same thing to a lion or gorilla).

Therefore, whilst a plant might react to some external stimuli like
heat, it can't move away and it being in pain would be a very cruel
evolution.

However, since the law is talking about preventing abuse of pets, they must be talking about the modern meaning. If they declare all animals to have the status of not being abused, that should also include not being killed for food.

Bingo.

The issue is getting 'some people' to consider what constitutes abuse.
In the old days that might really come down to if they were actually
hitting their partner or dog, whereas today, even 'coercive behaviour'
is considered abuse, mental cruelty etc.

Ignoring the obviously barbaric process of extracting semen from a
bull, artificially inseminating a cow, taking away her calf away at
birth and killing it and then taking the milk meant for the calf, and
drinking it yourself is bad enough ... but the 'mental cruelty' of
separating mother from calf is sufficient to constitute abuse.

Exactly the same as constantly taking eggs away from a bird (hen)
therefore not allowing it to complete it's goal of forming a clutch
and incubating them, or even consuming them herself if that's what
*she* wants, another example of stress / mental cruelty. We don't need
to add the stress of keeping her in unnatural quantities (10,000
rather 100 in nature) and so having to cut the end of her primary
manipulation device (her beak) off because the stress causes her to
attack her fellow captives.

Breeding a salmon and keeping it in a net in the sea and for three
years (often coved in sea lice) when it would normally be swimming
thousands of miles to from spawning grounds, another example of stress
and so cruelty.

Removing the teeth, tails, horns, testicles with no anaesthetic and in
most cases simply to make them less dangerous to control. When you are
forcing them to do things they don't want.

Feeding live chicks though a macerator, simply because they were born
male.

Starving animals of food and water when in transport to the
slaughterhouse (as if the transport wasn't stressful and cruel (very
hot / cold temperatures), simply because it would be a 'waste of
money' feeding them and to have the extra inconvenience of the mess
when they are being stunned and cut open.

The trolls *only* seem to consider the actual death in their BS
arguments but that (and how it's conducted) is only part of the issue.

All those issues would go away if we stopped commodifying sentient
beings as 'just meat'.

Cheers, T i m