Anyone who thinks animals do not suffer is an idiot. They have nervous system, therefore they feel pain, just like us. They also suffer emotional pain, not just physical. Kill a pig in front of another pig and he/she is going to be terrified.
>They have nervous system, therefore they feel pain, just like us. //
The second part doesn't follow from the first.
People have largely the same nervous systems and largely the same brain structures (AFAIK), and yet they react quite differently to pain and in the extremes they react exceedingly differently to the suffering of others.
Do you think that sows when they crush some of their piglets by lying on them behave how a human mother who accidentally sat on and crushed their own child would? Many animals eat their own offspring seemingly without any response one could term emotional.
You're anthropomorphising.
Now pigs are an interesting species and I wouldn't be personally surprised to find that they show some response which could be deemed a form of emotion.
Just because an animal exhibits herd behaviours, eg wariness when a member of the herd is wary/alert, doesn't mean they are empathising with that other animal.
>Anyone who thinks animals do not suffer is an idiot. //
The question is whether there is an internal pain that matches the external one. If I program a robot to exhibit pained behaviour and to scream when it's stabbed, then stab it, would you consider that robot to be in pain? The external reaction isn't necessarily linked to an internal feeling. Someone who refuses to leap to such a conclusion IMO is acting logically.
One annoying thing when this conversation comes up is where the burden of proof seems to lie: somehow, despite the fact that animals produce unambiguous behavior that they feel pain very profoundly, we are called upon to 'prove' that they can actually feel it, instead of the pain-deniers being called upon to prove the opposite.
It's so analogous to the days when people debated as to whether black people should be enslaved for their own good, or whether they were too stupid to mind being enslaved [see e.g., 1], that it would be farcical if it wasn't so fucking sad. Who else, one wonders, might not feel pain? Autistics? Mutes? Republicans?
[1] Plous, S., & Williams, T. (1995). Racial Stereotypes From the Days of American Slavery: A Continuing Legacy. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 25(9), 795-817.
Similarly, I can look you straight in the eye and tell you that I feel fine, while I am in fact suffering great pain internally. Does this mean that I am not in pain? How could you know? You can't. There is no reason for an animal to dissimulate in this way, so we may as well accept their outward expression of pain or pleasure at face value.
Are we talking about human mothers that have been confined in gestation crates for months, having been separated from their mother and their children in the past for generations?
> They have nervous system, therefore they feel pain, just like us.
That's two non-sequiturs in one sentence. I'm pretty sure there exist lifeforms that have a nervous system without an analog of pain. (Hint: If you want to defend your argument, start by defining "pain".) And it's quite egregious to just assume that there exist only one kind and quality of pain in all living animals. (Again, start by asking yourself how to rigorously define "pain".)
> They also suffer emotional pain, not just physical. Kill a pig in front of another pig and he/she is going to be terrified.
If at all, that's just an argument not to kill pigs in front of other pigs (unless the emotional pain is a desired outcome).
In "Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting", the author describes two pair-bonded pig brothers who had lived in the same pen since birth were friendly and warm with each other, cuddled, etc.
One day he goes out and shoots one of the pigs to slaughter it. Before he can get the dead pig out of the pen the other pig comes running over and starts eargly licking up the blood up of his brother from its dead body.
They may be smart, but we should not anthropomoprhize to the point that we imagine them having the same kind of empathy and self-consciousness as us.
