Which is why I think animal agency is a more interesting discussion.I think it's harder to be concise here because we're actually approaching territory where the answer starts to approach self evident territory.
Indeed. Why should agency be restricted to humans, when all large animals have the self-awareness, sentience, and survival instincts that predicate agency?
It's the former two that are really fascinating. Sentience is damn hard to prove, by a strict definition, but I think it is after a fashion proved by self-awareness. And that can be shown in a lot of ways. But I always hit a wall when I try to go vegetarian. I'm up to all but one meal a week, generally.
Quoting Jeremy Bentham on the question of sentience: "The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?" I'm not perfect by any means, but I've been about 95% vegan for 2 years now. Maybe I'm just stubborn, but once I made the connection between dairy, egg and meat products and suffering, I couldn't take part in that cycle any more.