Do non-sentient entities have moral consideration or standing?

Moral standing is the fact that a being be ethically considered for its own sake. When we say that some beings have moral standing we say in a moral matter context that their well-being must be given some consideration. To clarify it, an individual has moral standing for us if when making moral decisions, we feel we ought to take that individual's welfare into account for the individual's own sake and not for our benefit or someone else's benefit. For example a doctor who seeks the physical welfare of his patients and believes that it would be morally wrong to treat them in an improper way…