Do animals morally matter to us, in any way? If so, then our conduct towards them always matters in a moral capacity.
To have moral concern for other animals, means to view certain actions or conduct towards animals as possibly being a violation towards them. If we can act in immoral ways to other animals, then we should apply the same moral standards to all other animals, and not just certain species.
There are no justifications for immoral action, be they actions towards human animals or nonhuman animals. Engaging in harm, violence, enslavement and exploitation against billions of nonhuman animals each year vastly outnumber is the immoral actions we do to each other as a human species. In one year alone we do more harm to other animals than we have ever done to ourselves in the whole history of humanity.
There aren't over 50 billion humans murdered each year. There are more than 50 billion other animals murdered each year by us as a species. We are engaging in great crimes against other animals that we should have moral concern for.
What is the greater crime: to harm ourselves or to harm others?
What is the greater crime: to harm ourselves as a species are to harm other species?
What we are doing to other humans as a species pails in comparison to what we're doing to other animal species. The massive level of violations doesn't even come close. Thinking about the seriousness of the moral violations, we can see that harming ourselves or our own species through collective self-inflicted suffering of our way of life is less wrong than the suffering we create for other species because of our way of life.
What do you think of the analogy of self harm vs. other harm? Harming yourself is not a good thing, but if you have any right at all to harm someone, it's only yourself (self-ownership). You never have a right to harm another. And since we collectively choose to engage in a certain way of life, the harm we create for ourselves as a species is the only "right" we have, even if it's wrong, because we don't have the right to harm other species.