In response to Tyler's post here or the February 11th post.
Interestingly, there are plants that, despite lack of nervous system, have developed the ability to defend themselves by using semiochemicals to attract the higher trophic predators of the herbivores that are feeding on them. A fairly cool ability, I must say. While it could be so that a fungi or plant may have communicative abilities that are unfathomable to us, we do in fact need to eat something. So it's best that we eat those things which have no central nervous system, and thus experience no pain, that we know of. If it turns out that they do experience pain, we may need to modify our view, but given that this conclusion seems, at the very least, a long time away, we should operate off of our best knowledge.
Also, it surprise you to find out that birds can be far more intelligent than most people believe. Members of the Corvidae family (crows, magpies, and ravens), Psittacidae family (parrots, macaws, and parakeets), and the Columbidae family (Pigeons, and doves) are incredibly intelligent, most of them are far more intelligent than cows, in fact. I would recommend seeing the link on David Johnson's blog (http://critojazz.blogspot.com/2011/09/pm-bird-brains.html). Additionally, I would probably ask you to reconsider your view here. I agree that sentience isn't the only important thing. I think that the capacity to experience pain is very important. And chickens and turkeys, in that sense, aren't any worse off, or better off than cows. They go through incredible pain, and usually go mad before they are killed. They have their beaks seared off so that they won't be able to kill each other after long confinement periods.
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