are vegetarians more ethical by not eating meat?

[Sal]

For me, I'll give Bessie an affordable and comfortable life for a couple of years, and then kill Bessie with a boltgun and consume its delicious flesh as a steak.

It all boils down to this: If you do the above then you have no logical, objective way of arguing against someone who does the same thing to a human being, let them live for a few years in relative safety but not free and then kill them quickly to consume their "delicious flesh".

Heh, if someone is gonna eat the remains of my corpse after I'm dead, be my guest. After I'm dead, I won't be, so I won't even be around to experience suffering. Anyways, humans are recycled into the environment, just we're wormfood after the casket has decayed away, or whatever your particular culture does with the corpse.

Now, I don't value humans the same as I value an animal. I just don't. To me, I even value insects below, say, a sparrow. I value dogs over cats (I'm a dog person), I value loads of stuff over other stuff. Why shouldn't I?

Also, I'm doubly aware that these are value judgments. I don't claim objective morality, I can't. I claim an entirely subjective value-system and I'm aware of it.

The difference between me and a sheep getting killed is that our view of reality and pain & suffering aren't the same; how could they be?

There is no objective reason for why the one thing is okay but the other is not. To fall back to the default response of stating that humans are simply more important is a subjective feeling that has no objective basis and ignores the simple biological fact that any animal, human or not, has the same urge to live and be free of suffering. Using this capacity of suffering as a measure of who is eligible to our moral consideration is the only objective basis offered so far. So in order to remove this contradiction from morality, I would argue it is best to extend our sense of who our moral duties apply to.

Why? No, really. Why?

You sound like you have the view that objective morality exists. I don't think so - I think every moral choice is a value judgment at its basis.