The point of this, I think, is that we justify our behavior towards animals on the belief that they are not "the same" as us. That is, that they aren't beings capable of the same rich experiences of the world that we are and, therefore, their suffering is less important than ours. This same sort of rationalization has been used throughout history to justify similar behavior towards other human beings.

Evidence is increasingly showing us that the qualities we believed differentiated us from animals, that made our lives more worthy of respect, aren't actually unique to us.

If you're going to come back at that with "we're better at these things than they are", then that philosophy suggests again that there are lesser classes of human being as well, the ones that aren't as good as others at whatever metric you happen to be using.

It is natural that we seek to justify behavior on which our living standards are dependent, but that doesn't make our reasoning sound.