‘There’s no reason to say humans have more worth or moral status than animals’

"Defenders of speciesism argue that humans have a special rational nature that sets them apart from animals, but the problem is where that leaves infants and the profoundly intellectually disabled."

This kind of statement is either intentionally intellectually dishonest or shows a profound immaturity and understanding the argumentation. This is something that I would expect a teenager to bring up in a debate about the subject because the two points used to rebut it and make absolutely no intellectual sense.

Indeed infants are incapable of what we consider rational thought but through the normal course of growth and maturity they will become capable of this and we know this. The "intellectually disabled" again is an abnormality that we can identify as abnormal because we know the vast majority of people are not. This is known as the exception that proves the rule.

The author also seems to be quite selective in their viewpoints. Their belief is oysters don't feel pain therefore it's okay to eat them. How does one judge feeling pain is it response to stimuli. Different humans feel different level of pain for the same stimuli, some may even say they feel no pain at all for identical stimuli. There are many species of plants that react to damage in a way that could be consistent with a pain and protection response. Is the argument that a central nervous system is required for pain? That seems like a highly selective viewpoint. If we bred food animals to not feel pain would that then be okay? According to the author eating oysters it should be.

The most convincing argumentation would be one of sustainability. Farming animals to eat is not always the most sustainable way for nutrition. When you're looking at it from that point we would also need to take a look at the number of plants that we farm for nutritional value as well many of them are not sustainable either. We have seen the ravages of monocultures as just one example.

Genesis 1:26, the part about "dominion." Many people call that a reason. And many people don't agree with it, but one can't say "There's no reason...."

Tips to get people to read your bullshit number 1: state an opinion as a fact.

yup, its an artifact of our religious past