so what is the difference between a carrot and a chicken to a non-speciesist? who decided one species had more worth than the other species here?
a living being is a living being!
I hope you don't think what I think you think, that a carrot is a living being. A carrot is a living thing, but there is no well-known or established or reputable school of thought anywhere in the world that establishes a carrot as a living being. Little children can readily and correctly identify the difference between an animal and a vegetable.
But to summarise, the difference betweena carrot and a chicken is:
Chicken is a sentient being
Sentient = having senses, namely eyes, nose, tongue, ears, body, and thought.
With these senses the living thing becomes sentient and experiences cold, heat, light, dark, fear, contentment, confusion, nonconfusion, hunger, repletion, and other things.
Carrot is a nonsentient thing.
Nonsentient = not having senses, namely eyes, nose, tongue, ears, body and thought.
Without these things, the living thing does not become sentient and does not experience cold, heat, light, dark, fear, contentment, confusion, nonconfusion, hunger, repletion, and other things.
Some say carrots can in fact sense light and dark. But even such people never say carrots sense confusion and fear; and if they do, such people have to establish how the carrot senses these feeings in the lack of sentience, and how they can recognise and identify the manifestation of them.
Little children can easily see fear in a sqwuaking chicken, and complete absence of any emotion in a carrot.
Others may say the carrot has the emotions, but they need to explain what they see that everyone can't see.
If someone says there is no distinction between something sentient as a chicken and something nonsentient as a carrot, then far less distinction is possibloe to recognise between a something sentient as chicken and something sentient as a human being; and since such little distinction can be seen between the chicken and the human being, and one has already decided that chicken and carrot are equal, it follows in their view that human being and carrot are also mostly equal; a view which would be disturbing to most people when considering what is good and proper or wrong and improper to be eaten.