A very common idea
"It's fine to eat animals, as long as they had a good life and are killed without pain." This view assumes that animals lose nothing when they die. The text looks at why someone would think that.
"They don't understand what death is"
Some say animals aren't harmed by death because they don't understand what it is. There are two ways to defend this.
Version 1: without understanding death, there's no fear of it. But the fear of dying only makes sense because death is bad. The harm of death comes before the fear, not after.
Version 2: you only lose something if you understand you're losing it. This isn't convincing either. Imagine a baby who loses an inheritance without knowing. The baby was harmed, even without understanding. In the same way, an animal values the good things in its life, like eating, playing, and resting in the sun. Death keeps it from having those things anymore, even if it never thinks about death.
"Only those with plans for the future lose something"
Another idea: death only harms those who have desires about the future, like plans and projects. A pig that hides food for later would have that kind of desire. Many other animals wouldn't.
The problem: babies and small children hardly have plans either. Nobody thinks that makes killing them less serious. Death harms because it takes away good experiences that would have come, not just because it ruins plans.
In short
- You don't need to understand death to be harmed by it.
- You don't need to have plans to lose something when you die.
- With death, animals lose the good experiences they would still have had.