Whenever I see the backlash to conversations about animal suffering, I wonder if one reason is because it is a sort of “inconvenient truth”, ala global warming, where we are doing grave damage but we prefer to collectively ignore it because that damage aligns with our material incentives. That animals of many kinds are capable of substantial suffering seems honestly obvious to me from first hand observation, and I suspect it is obvious to most others too, at least when we are children. But I think we intentionally “unlearn” this culturally, because for most of human history it was a necessarily evil to sustain ourselves. To bring this truth up begins to break a spell we cast on ourselves that we don’t want unbroken. I look forward to the day when more people feel that their materials needs are satisfied enough that we can collectively approach this topic with an unencompromised intellectual honesty.