WIRE COMMENTARIES - (speaking up for 'food' animals) 

Animals are our fellow creatures – inferior to us in several important ways – but also superior to us in others – for instance their sensitivity to their environment.  this recognition implicitly refutes the arrogance of speciesism, and the view that we have an absolute right to dispose of other species as we see fit, because our own is the most intellectually developed

I suggest we all ask ourselves :
– not ‘can they reason?’ 
- Nor, ‘can they talk?’ but
– ‘can they suffer?’
…….and then “is it really necessary?”