Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law

Its very logical. The current definition of sentience being proposed in the bill requires that an animal be able to perceive pain to be within scope (I'm not entirely convinced this should be a necessary condition, but that's what they've settled on) . When existing animal rights legislation was written lobsters, cephalapods etc. were considered incapable of doing this. The evidence now shows that they are capable of perceiving pain so they are being included in the bill (along with rats, deer and other mammals but not insects). Hence logical consistency is preserved. Perhaps the next time they revise animal rights legislation they will have evidence that insects can feel pain and so they will also be included.

I think it's a lot more likely that in 50 years, per capita animal consumption will be higher than today, simply because the subgroups that tend to favor vegetarianism are shrinking as a share of the overall global population (and tend not to have as many children), whereas global income is increasing.

Certainly global meat consumption has been on the rise, going from 150 Billion kilograms in 1990, to more than 350 billion kilograms today (https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/04/26/1023636/sustaina...)

In terms of per-capita consumption, it has increased by 20kg per person since 1960. (source: https://ourworldindata.org/meat-production)

There is no reason to expect this trend to reverse. I do think that in North America, per capita meat consumption will decline a bit since in the U.S. we really eat too much of everything and there will be more pressure to switch to more humane meat production that is more expensive per kilogram. I think this is a positive development, but humanely raised beef is not that much more expensive - maybe 20% more expensive, so not at all "caviar".

Pro-tip: Check out butcherbox and other services for free range beef, chicken, and pork. Lots of services like this are springing up.

OTOH, world population will level out soon, and may even start shrinking, so total meat consumption in 50 years may be lower than today. Per-capita consumption will be higher. I don't see vegetarians increasing as a share of global population, the majority of the world loves to eat meat and will continue to do so.

In terms of climate change, this promotes more beef consumption because beef is the best way to turn a large portion of the earth's dry arable land into food production (at least unless humans evolve to eat grass and shrub). A large part of the planet simply doesn't have the fresh water supply to support growth of food crops, and this is where cattle graze. If you believe the earth is going to get drier, then this means the global diet will shift even more towards beef consumption as farms that used to grow corn exhaust water tables and revert back to pasture.

This will continue to be the case as the earth warms, and such warming will advantage beef over other forms of food production more dependent on wet areas with steady rains.

Totally agree

Not saying it’s good/bad but I see this as inevitable given the tendency of increasing sensitivity of society

> We can afford to feed everyone and give everyone a decent life without killing each other. Also saving people gives us a bigger pool of talented people and diverse genetics.

We can also afford to feed everyone without harming so many animals. In fact, reducing our reliance on animal products is likely the only and much more efficient way to feed everyone. And not only that, we're also destroying whole ecosystems because of our unnecessarily large demand on animal products, which in consequence causes huge problems for future generations.

So harming animals less is definitely in our interest.

> When we cannot give each other a decent life, we resort to mass killing (even today) - think of all the wars started due to hunger or ethnic reasons.

I'm also thinking of all the wars yet to come, because of the consequences of climate change or uninhabitable areas, which both were (among other things) caused by our ridiculously high meat consumption in a few wealthy countries.

> My point was that we are responsible for the safety and prosperity of each other, not any animal.

The fact that people even have to fight for children to not get abused for us having some luxuries (rare minerals for the latest smartwatch or phone, coffee beans, chocolate,...), should make it clear that we don't feel responsible for each other on a grand scale. There's a varying degree of responsibility and it quickly vanishes with greater physical distance to each other and the less we feel connected in one way or another.

And it's not uncommon to feel more responsible for animals than for humans. Like my neighbor's cat is treated better than those children working in some mines or farms, also because it's more beneficial to some of us to treat those children badly.

Or to put it differently, responsibility for other human beings which are outside of our closer groups is nothing that comes naturally or just is or is even necessary for our survival. It's something we had to come up with on our own with our ethics. So we have to fight for it and constantly remind ourselves about it or otherwise we keep doing all the horrors we still do to each other (e.g. slavery). It's no different than our ethical beliefs in other regards, e.g. animal suffering.

If an enemy waged war, will you let them kill you or your creatures? this how I view this matter. these creatures are under my care, and I'm under an obligation to protect them. this obligation overrides any other feelings or beliefs I have.

of course, I'm no Buddhist, and I'm sure you have another point of view about the matter.