The question you propose to ask is "can this species understand its own fairness to other species?"
That is absolutely not testable by our current means, not for any rigorous definition of knowledge. There are numerous instances, for example, of mothers of one species nursing the young of another species. Sometimes even of predator mothers nursing prey young. So, prima facie, assuming a reasonable definition of "fairness" it would seem that a vast number of species are capable of exhibiting this trait, including many of the ones you eat.
Second, it's also completely arbitrary. Why test for fairness? Why not ability to generate a profit on the stock market, or to do square roots, or tie shoes? It's a stupidly chosen metric that, at its heart, embodies circular logic -- choose a human trait, and then apply a human-centric test (which we don't even do by the way) to see if the species can be eaten. What do you expect the result would be? Even dolphins can fail this exam.
The bottom line is, your criteria is arbitrary and untestable. And it cannot even be applied consistently, as you would have to admit the consumption of severely encephalitic fetuses and the like -- which is something only a person arguing an abstraction could endorse. No socially well-adjusted person can seriously admit that they want such a thing to be permissible in their civilization.
That is absolutely not testable by our current means, not for any rigorous definition of knowledge. There are numerous instances, for example, of mothers of one species nursing the young of another species. Sometimes even of predator mothers nursing prey young. So, prima facie, assuming a reasonable definition of "fairness" it would seem that a vast number of species are capable of exhibiting this trait, including many of the ones you eat.
Second, it's also completely arbitrary. Why test for fairness? Why not ability to generate a profit on the stock market, or to do square roots, or tie shoes? It's a stupidly chosen metric that, at its heart, embodies circular logic -- choose a human trait, and then apply a human-centric test (which we don't even do by the way) to see if the species can be eaten. What do you expect the result would be? Even dolphins can fail this exam.
The bottom line is, your criteria is arbitrary and untestable. And it cannot even be applied consistently, as you would have to admit the consumption of severely encephalitic fetuses and the like -- which is something only a person arguing an abstraction could endorse. No socially well-adjusted person can seriously admit that they want such a thing to be permissible in their civilization.