So here's an interesting question: if plants are conscious, can vegans eat them? And if not, what will they eat? Not trying to troll vegans; if this is different and some one can enlighten me, I'd appreciate it.
There's still the level of consciousness and intelligence to look at.
I eat everything but octopus/calamari. I think they are too intelligent to eat. I've seen smart cows, and if I didn't grow up eating beef and it wasn't such a great source a protein, I would cut it out too and just eat chicken. For me it's where do I draw the line of intelligence of what I want to eat. The less likely the animal can comprehend what's going on, the easier I feel about it.
I can't eat Octopus, Pigs, Dogs, or any type of Ape because they are too aware of the process.
Oddly I don't have the same aversion to Dolphins or Whales. They may have a comparable amount of intelligence to animals that I wouldn't eat, and a dolphin is even cuter than an octopus, but for some reason I don't have a problem identifying them as food. Sort of like Sheep and Goats, they are cute, but also clearly labeled as food in my head.
It's impossible to live and thrive without being detrimental to other organisms - for me, the idea is to accept the inevitable cycle of struggle and violence, while minimizing the _exploitative treatment_ of other beings [plant or animal -- easier said than done with regard to plants -- one easy step is to include as much fruit and perennial leaf matter in the diet as practical [i.e., the plant is treated more like something to be nurtured rather than merely 'grown and discarded']
Something like: See, even plants are conscious, there is no point so let's just continue eating steaks and pork chops every day.
You could say the same about breeding animals for meat or even people for slavery - in fact that seems to be not to many steps down that route. I don't think either are acceptable though, so we're back to deciding where to draw that suffering line.
Or economically valuable for organ extraction.
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,138483,...
> [Labs] at the University of Texas and at the University of Bath ... created headless mice [and] headless tadpoles.
> "It would almost certainly be possible to produce human bodies without a forebrain," Princeton biologist Lee Silver told the London Sunday Times. "These human bodies without any semblance of consciousness would not be considered persons, and thus it would be perfectly legal to keep them 'alive' as a future source of organs."