• whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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    3 months ago

    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.

    • threeduck@aussie.zone
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      3 months ago

      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.

      • whotookkarl@lemmy.world
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        3 months ago

        Maybe I’m off on this but suffering/misery would include pain + the emotional state of unhappiness or we would just use pain for both? Avoiding painful stimuli doesn’t tell me about their emotional state or cognitive awareness of the pain, just an awareness of the stimuli.

        • threeduck@aussie.zone
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          3 months ago

          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.

          • nieceandtows@lemmy.world
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            3 months ago

            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.