If I'm going to argue with you I'd need some clarification

I find the moralizing around animals a little odd, to be honest.

What do you mean 'moralizing around animals'?

The whole idea that we should keep these creatures in a state of bliss until we kill them and devour their flesh is ... strange.

Nobody is arguing bliss.

I mean, these are animals that we've genetically engineered to be nothing more than food

There's also this implied notion that the minimization of suffering (perhaps unnecessary suffering?) is the highest moral good to which one might aspire. But that suffers from some problems as well.

I don't know of an ethical system that doesn't suffer from problems. I was suggesting a better ethical approach than 'comparable importance', not some maxim that would sustain all of morality. Anyway, after your paragraph above, you provide the following one in order to explain what problems my approach suffers from:

I mean, these are animals that we've genetically engineered to be nothing more than food, as our farmer here says. The only way to decrease their suffering would be to stop breeding them. Or to engineer the capacity for suffering out of them until they're basically just muscle tissue and enough nervous system to support the aforementioned.

There are worthwhile points, but they do not at all list any 'problems' with my approach. Honestly, everything you listed here is arbitrary to what I was suggesting.

The reality for most that don't try too hard to examine why they think what they think is probably closest to this innate "aw that's fucked up" impulse.

What does someone else's ignorance have to do with calling for a better moral approach?

And the line delineating when that impulse fires is a little different for everyone and certainly more emotional than strictly rational.

...Huh?

If you think about it we treat these chickens better than we've treated indigenous peoples. Hell, at least we're not trying to rape the chickens or give them smallpox.

Are you justifying a form of suffering by explain that other forms of suffering are worse?