Even if you accept my position, you could argue that maybe lobsters do have consciousness. Maybe they're even way more intelligent than we think they are. That'd be a problem. But, being scientific, you have to operate on what you have evidence for, not on what you don't. For the same reason, I don't think abortion is human murder (unless it's late term, after the brain's been thoroughly developed).
Another problem, of course, is where you draw the line. Lobsters aren't intelligent enough for personhood. What about dogs? What about chimps? What about severely mentally handicapped humans? Do you draw the line at doing calculus? (Because then you exclude a lot of normal humans!) That's the problem with fascism. :B I need to rethink my ways. But it's too difficult, and meat is calorically-dense and tasty!
For instance, I keep chickens and let them free-pasture until the day I butcher them. I think they enjoy their time out there as much as any animal would. Depending who or what you believe, the end is very quick for them, so the suffering is minimal.
I realize this isn't the norm, though. I'm sure the "joy" experienced on many factory farms is some kind of dystopian thing, like being happy you got extra gruel last Tuesday.
But it doesn't have to be that way. Just something to think about.
Taken to an extreme, we could have those animals be humans that are somehow born masochists, desperate to get consumed by cannibals.
Hmm. I think it's morally dubious to make them in the first place. Past that, we're talking about fulfilling their desires. If someone wants to die (say they're suffering from some slow, terminal illness or maybe incurable depression), is it ethical to keep them alive and deny them euthanasia? That seems like the same scenario. I say no; you should have the right to die if you want to in the most painless way possible. I think the Universe suffers a loss with the loss of your consciousness because it's an amazing thing, but your subjective suffering is more salient. I make that call on absolutely no rational ground; it's just my silly emotions. Silly emotions from a silly consciousness. :3 And it's that element of silliness that makes my position on this itself, or anyone else's, PERHAPS EVEN ALL THOSE MEAT ANIMALS' SUFFERING, seem sickeningly irrelevant in the grand, inscrutable, uncaring scheme of things. But that's morality for you.
We've gotta be careful here.
I'm so close to bringing up how maybe the self is a lie and how moral relativism justifies the worst levels of suffering imaginable.
The cow in question repeatedly assures the protagonist that the entire process is very humane and that it desires nothing more than to be eaten and enjoyed by others. It's actually quite offended when Arthur only orders a salad.
This is a very fascist position, though! I could say the same for a human on life support who's gone through brain death (really, a lobster's smarter, at that point). Although perhaps that's not really that bad, albeit macabre. Perhaps, one day, we'll lab-grow meat, maybe our own, to eat, just to see what we taste like. That's equivalent to consuming non-lab-grown but also unconscious human tissue, I think. BUT SCARIER, this same line of thinking might lead to much-vaster-than-human intelligences deciding we don't have rights and that it's okay to eat us!
Am I okay with being eaten by a hyperintelligent being to whom I have the status of a lobster or a cow? Maybe. Because I really admire a being like that. Maybe it could effortlessly convince me to surrendering to being eaten with arguments more creative and compelling than a million Shakespeares could pen up, effortlessly, like some Saruman-godthing[0], because that just goes with the territory of being that smart! But, short of that, I'd try to run away, and many people don't share my ambivalence...
Ethics is difficult. But chicken is tasty.
[0]: https://youtu.be/VHrTTgmB_3w?t=385