Cows and pigs definitely have personalities. I agree that Pokémon express emotions in a more human-like way, but if you consider that cats and dogs have personalities, so do cows and pigs. They’ve just been commodified to an extreme degree. The only difference between cats/dogs and animals farmed in the West is just cultural habits. u/ssjmarx put it well: “People have an aversion to eating dogs for the same reason - if your culture hasn’t gotten you used to the idea of seeing an animal as food, your empathy will naturally kick in at the thought of killing and eating it.”

I don’t use “it” to describe animals mostly for this exact reason.

Farm animals sometimes have names - some dairy capitalists even enjoy telling you which specific named cows were exploited for your milk. But I suppose this is a pretty standard marketing thing - corporations love to simultaneously humanize animals and bring attention to the fact that they’re exploited.