Serious question: is there any peer reviewed evidence that food animals are conscious to the level of self awareness?
Personally, I am of the opinion that testing for self awareness is very difficult and its not clear why that's the cut off for where we stop eating things to begin with. Clearly the animals we farm and eat are capable of feeling pain, and many of them are very intelligent. Pretending that we would respond to the news that eg pigs had passed the mirror test by no longer eating them seems farcical to me.
Without any convincing evidence in either direction, I find it perplexing that people seem to default to asumming the negative (i.e. the more convenient assumption)