But any appeal to the notion that non human animals are equal to us humans is clearly absurd, no other species actually achieves anything lasting. They can't read or write to preserve their insights into the world, non humans do not build cathedrals or write symphonies and they nearly all live in conditions that any human would try, with some degree of success, to make more hospitable. There is a philosophical point behind the assumption that humans and non humans are, to some extent, equal. That is that equal beings should be treated equally, a difference in treatment needs to be justified by reference to a difference between the two beings. It matters that the attributes being compared are relevant to the reason for the comparison.
Black people are inferior to whites in their ability to reflect light.
This fact appears to have been quite irrelevantly used by some white employers to reject non Caucasian job applicants. If I want an employee able to dig ditches, or to build computers his or her inferior light reflecting ability is not a relevant characteristic. You can't stuff a snail. Assuming you have realised that this is not a joke the difficulty in providing an answer to this question is not because you don't know the difference between a chicken and a snail, but because you have no context to suggest a relevant criterion. From a purely culinary point of view one's ability to stuff the creature might be the appropriate answer, from a moral or philosophical viewpoint I might as well ask whether the cook will be Caucasian or Negroid.