How intelligent must an animal be before it becomes unethical to eat it?

Bring on the bacon! Pigs are pretty smart.
I don’t like to think about it because I just can’t stop eating bacon. Blinders on!

@GloPro I too will be grateful when a soy product can even APPROACH the taste of a legitimate slice of bacon

When it becomes able to expressly deny permission to do so.

^^^ No blinders!

How can one truly appreciate food if they don’t know how it happened to come to the table?

If the animal can figger how to lower my taxes, it gets to bunk in the spare bedroom.

@SecondHandStoke “When it becomes able to expressly deny permission to do so.”

Does this mean that babies and young toddlers, not able to speak yet, are fair game for the dinner table?

My mother’s in the tragic, late stages of Alzheimer’s disease. She no longer lucid, and when she tries to speak it’s mostly neologisms, gibberish, and stuttering. I guess it must be “Soylent Green” time for her?

You know as well as I that there are already rules in place regarding the consumption of humans.

Besides there’s already issues of consent relating to minors and the mentally ill.

Intelligence doesn’t matter. Is it tasty? If so, it’s fair game.

@SadieMartinPaul
That is exactly what it means.
But be sure to expect advocates of that “argument” to invent excuses about how the rules they invented do not apply to themselves.

“Unethical” by whose standards? Some cultures eat dog, some eat various kinds of monkey, are we to judge the choices of entire ethnic groups based on our own personal codes?

To my knowledge, no human culture today condones cannibalism, so the remarks made about infants and non compos mentis geriatrics are just meant to be inflammatory.

If I decide that the newly discovered intelligence level of a chicken creates an ethical conundrum for me, vis a vis its consumption, then I will likely not consume it.

I know exactly how my bacon got to my table. I just refuse to think about it.

Erm…

Ethics are expressed by the intelligence of the aggressor, not by the lacking intelligence of the victim.

@ragingloli That’s the problem with faulty logic. It can’t stand up to scrutiny, challenge, or debate.

I’d never dine on a dolphin, at least not on porpoise.
Besides, the plate would slide off & get my dinner all wet.

The decision to eat or not eat an animal is not based on their intelligence. It is based on their deliciousness.

The intelligence of the animal isn’t a condition if your ethics are based on YHWH’s commands. As long as we’re NOT living in Eden-like conditions, we can eat certain animals (because otherwise, even animals will stop eating animals and become vegetarians, us included i.e. Genesis 1:29–30 and Isaiah 11:6–9;).
 
In the Garden:

Genesis 1:29–30 (NIV)

29 Then God said, “I give you every seed-bearing plant on the face of the whole earth and every tree that has fruit with seed in it. They will be yours for food. 30 And to all the beasts of the earth and all the birds in the sky and all the creatures that move along the ground—everything that has the breath of life in it—I give every green plant for food.” And it was so.
 
 
In the future:
 
Isaiah 11:6–9 (NIV)

6 The wolf will live with the lamb,
    the leopard will lie down with the goat,
    the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
    and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
    their young will lie down together,
    and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
    and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
    on all my holy mountain,
    for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord
    as the waters cover the sea.

Footnotes:

a. Isaiah 11:6 Hebrew; Septuagint lion will feed

Ethically, I don’t think eating any animals is right.

“There is a direct correlation between one’s consumption of meat and one’s sense of humor.”

-Anthony Bourdain

as there is between one’s consumption of meat and their body mass

If intelligence is the criteria for whether an animal gets eaten or not, then I am totally baffled about why it’s considered so horrible to eat a cow in India.

They certainly aren’t the brightest creatures on the planet so what did they do to earn an exemption?

The ability to reason, like humans, should do it. It also depends on what it eats since it’s eating crap would make the meat taste, likewise, like crap.

When they are intelligent enough to yell in human’s language: “DON’T EAT ME”!