Hehe, your comment might appear as somewhat aggressive if you were directly blaming Gio or someone else for trying to force their moral reasoning down your throat. But, again, your comment seems to be more about your general frustrations of the problems of contemporary moral discussion. Which is fine, and I pretty much agree with your dislike of both relativism and force-feeding moral values. You are describing in a clear and understandable way the exact problems I think we - as members of the mankind - are facing, and why it would help to develop some new ways of thinking and talking about choices and consequences of choices.

Well, but instead of trying to tackle the broad picture, I'll just drop a comment on the 'argument by pain'. Personally, I've thought the argument goes along these lines;

1. It is nice to avoid causing pain to others
2. Many of the animals seem to be capable of experiencing pain - while they are alive
3. Dead bodies don't seem to experience anything
4. The meat we eat usually isn't alive anymore, so the meat doesn't feel pain.
5. But where did the meat come from? What kind of life did the animal have before it got killed?

And 5. leads one to prefer such animal raising methods which show some basic respect towards animals, not causing them unnecessary sufferings. And choosing such a methods of killing that they are as quick and clean as possible. The way I see it, this line of reasoning leads to one favouring responsible family scale-farms, like the one Mr. Polecat is running, and avoiding meat-factories where pigs are kept in so small cages that they develop nasty injuries.