The short version: most people think "speciesism" means one thing — treating animals like products. It actually comes in two forms, and the second one is almost never talked about. Both mean the same suffering gets ignored, just for different reasons.
Kind one: treating animals like things we own
This is the familiar kind. A chicken becomes "poultry." A cow becomes "beef" before it's even born. Once an animal is labeled a product, its suffering stops mattering the way a person's would — it just becomes a cost of doing business, like wear and tear on a machine. If a factory did to human infants what it does to chickens, no one would need an essay explaining why that's wrong. The wrongness would be obvious. The only reason it needs explaining for chickens is that we've already decided, before hearing any argument, that their suffering counts for less. That's speciesism of the first kind.
Kind two: not caring because it happens "out there," to a different species
This one is sneakier, because it doesn't look like cruelty — it looks like indifference. A deer starving to death over a hard winter. A fish being eaten alive by a larger fish. Most people either don't think about this at all, or shrug it off as "just nature." But swap the species: if it were happening to dogs in your neighborhood, you'd call animal control. The suffering is just as real for a wild animal as a farmed one — it's just easier to ignore because no human put it there and no human profits from it. Not caring is still a choice about whose pain counts. See our piece on the actual scale of wild animal suffering for what "just nature" really involves.
One kind of speciesism says an animal's suffering doesn't matter because we're using it. The other says it doesn't matter because we're not. Both land on the same answer: it doesn't matter.
Why the usual excuse doesn't hold up
Ask someone why animal suffering matters less than human suffering, and you'll usually hear: they're not as smart, they don't plan ahead, they don't have language. The problem is that some humans don't have those things either — infants, people with severe cognitive disabilities, people in comas — and almost nobody is willing to say their suffering doesn't count. So the real reason isn't the trait. It's just which species the being belongs to, dressed up to sound like it's about something else.
"We've always done it this way" isn't a defense
Something being old, common, or convenient explains why it keeps happening. It doesn't explain why it's okay. Plenty of harmful practices lasted a long time simply because most people didn't examine them closely. Lasting a long time isn't the same as being justified.
What this actually means in practice
Once species membership stops being a free pass, two things follow. First: breeding animals for food, clothing, or entertainment needs the same justification you'd require for doing it to a human — and there isn't one, no matter how "humane" the farm claims to be. Second: wild animal suffering deserves the same seriousness as farmed animal suffering, not a shrug because "that's just nature." Neither one is solved by treating animals slightly better. Both require actually taking their suffering seriously — not managing it, ending its causes.