Earlier quoted context omitted.
Animals that are both higher intelligence in our perception and closer to us day to day will fall into the category of disgust, imo. For instance, I've had dogs my whole life. They're pretty deep creatures with emotions, intelligence, and personalities all their own. If you tell me that you ate what I have a personal connection to, what I consider my family - It's hard not to look at you in disgust. Similar to the di…
Cows have much larger brains than dogs and are quite intelligent, and so are pigs. The "dogs are special" argument is a familiarity thing or perhaps a statement that dogs evolved to more effectively manipulate human emotions.
Now, with pigs, you have a point. They're indeed very smart.
I justify eating pigs by reasoning that pigs will happily eat humans if they get a chance (a few pig farmers lose their lives that way every year, plus there's the occasional serial killer...). Turnabout is fair play.