You suggest to draw the line at the border conscious/non-conscious. Or at least that seems a borderthat is kind of a shelling point and plausible for many. This is in the tradition of sizes of souls which I first saw suggested by Douglas Hofstadter (though this is probably much older). See e.g. here: http://roychristopher.com/quite-sick-mike-vick This actually shows one problem with this or at least a very common distinction that is routinely made but often lost in theoretical consideration: Why do we eat some mammals and some not despite comparable 'consciousness'.

What I see at work here is empathy. It is easier to have empathy with animals that match with (some) features of humans. And these don't need to be objective features but in practice are just what you have learned to recognize as human like. So you empathise with your pets whom you have a kind-of relationship with. But you eat e.g. pigs because you don't.