You're being downvoted, but I agree. If you search the word "intelligent" in this page, it is used as a reason not to eat things. It's fine if one makes this a

You're being downvoted, but I agree. If you search the word "intelligent" in this page, it is used as a reason not to eat things. It's fine if one makes this a foundation for one's ethics of death, but one must be clear that it is and that it's only one way to look at things. Moreover, one should be clear that using intelligence as a reason to justify or avoid eating an organism leads to the problem that then an assessment of intelligence is vital for decision-making -- and if we happen not to understand an organism's intelligence, then we risk making the "wrong" decision out of ignorance. It can also lead to an essentially eugenicist view in which people as well as other organisms of lesser intelligence are viewed as less valuable. To be clear I'm not saying anyone here is a eugenicist: I'm saying that in history, eugenicists have taken this view. Ranking animals by intelligence is not the only way to decide your ethics of consumption. If I want to look close to home, I can consider the ethics of the First Nations people who have lived in the area I now live in. They have a sophisticated ethic of consumption that does not rely on intelligence-ranking. Or we can look at other points of view that privilege the land and its health, and direct decisions from there. Blindness about our assumptions and hypotheses doesn't help the conversation. Let's set out our axioms.