Not to me they aren't.

I once watched a film of a persistence hunter approaching the prey he'd chased for miles. He spoke to it, approached it calmly, sat with it and caressed it, put it's head on his lap and held it for a minute, petting it like a dog and shushing and whispering to it. And then he cut it's throat, and cried as it died.

That's what living on the farm is like. That's real life, fully and authentically felt. In my opinion, all the living things I eat deserve such respect and reverence for furthering my life.

You can feel differently. Lots of folks do.

> You wouldn’t be saying these things if the aliens came and harvested your children for food.

What if the aliens look like plants? What if they're here already? What if they're your distant cousin?

Funny thing - when you look at single celled organisms like bacteria and yeasts under a microscope, they engage in behaviors which seem shockingly like animal behaviors. They seem to explore their environment, have senses, hunt and eat, reproduce, and notably, they seem to dislike specific stimuli. They really meet every definition I can think of for a being which appears to be conscious, including memory, and we eat them by the billions without even knowing.