I believe you’ve provided the most coherent take on this subject. Well done.

Well, yes. Rural kids play with bugs and do all sorts of objectively horrible things to them. Because they are bugs. I am not trying to defend it, but yes, that’s normal.

That is odd as fuk. Really?

Don’t much care about the sensations that crickets, or even lobster may have.
On the other hand, I’ve spent a lot of time around cows. They know what’s going on. I love beef, but I could not kill a cow. Pigs are fukin smart, and I eat a lot of pork.
My perspective would certainly change if I wasn’t able to buy my food in nice clean packages. I might eat less meat if I had to kill it, but I really doubt I’d quit.

I don’t disagree with you, but there’s a body of research about plants’ reactions, and some of them certainly look more like pain than just accommodating to negative stimuli.

This is sad, but its going to happen quite a few more times before they really understand large scale gene editing. And even after they do understand it better, probably some percentage of the time its gonna go wrong.

So what? Am I missing something here? Why should I care?