There are a variety of ways to rationalize human behaviors, one common one is to assume that while causing suffering is wrong, we're not living in a global horr

There are a variety of ways to rationalize human behaviors, one common one is to assume that while causing suffering is wrong, we're not living in a global horror story because the animals don't actually suffer. That's easy to believe if you were taught like I was as a very young boy that it's OK to catch a fish with a fishhook and cut it up to eat because fish are not sufficiently intelligent to feel pain, be hurt, be scared, or suffer. It's easy to generalize that incapability of suffering to extend to all animals when you eventually learn that the same kind of big-eyed cow that says moo is what we eat as beef or hamburgers. Supermarkets make the default behavior to take home shrink-wrapped cuts of meat without ever getting the chance to gauge for yourself whether a cow can suffer; humans are shockingly good at not re-evaluating their priors. How do you rationalize it? There are lots of ways, you've ruled out that they not intelligent, which is a common one. But are they intelligent but not suffering? Is non-human suffering not wrong? Does the wrongness of causing suffering require the victim to have an undetectable soul, which only humans posses? Is "wrongness" scalar, contingent on need, or mitigated by intelligence, or by an intensity of suffering, or by some other factor not considered? Is tradition and the natural order relevant? Is justice preserved by karmic retribution in an afterlife or reincarnation? Are chickens just really evil and deserving of suffering? Are we actually villains in a global horror story?