[Big Papa Goat]

Kinda makes you think about why we should grant equal moral status to all humans.
I'd say that there's no way to give them equal moral status, since it would never make sense to morally judge an animal the way one morally judges a human being. If a bear eats a guy, then it's bad, but no one would seriously call the bear evil, as you would if a guy ate another guy. I know that probably isn't the actual question at hand, but if animals don't have any morality to themselves, then it actually wouldn't make any sense to give them moral status equal to humans. I mean, what is the moral status we give to humans? Would we think it's morally wrong to lie to another human in most cases? You can't exactly lie or tell the truth to a cat. There aren't a lot of ways you can interact with animals that would involve anything that could be called a human virtue, like honesty, genorosity, what have you. I dunno, maybe virtue and morality aren't really the same thing I guess. But my point is that since animals aren't moral entities, the best consideration we could really give them is not being cruel to them. Animals seem to feel pain in the same way humans do, so if you were going to grant them moral equality, the only practical consequence would be to not inflict wanton pain on them. Killing them painlessly to eat them may or may not matter, depends on whether or not cows are aware of their existence. That's not really as obvious as the pain thing though, even with such as a cow or fish a person can approximately tell when they're in pain. Although I suppose the real issue is whether animals actually can experience pain, not whether or not the sight of the animal in pain can excite sympathy in a human.