You've not actually answered the relevant question: Why care about species, but not about individual suffering?
There is no sensible answer, because your emotional attachment to the consumption of dead animals, and the very understandable resistance to the idea that you may have supported (and continue to support) needless cruelty of immense proportions has made you blind to "the negative consequences of [your] acts".
On the practical side, since you supposedly care so much about species: Have you ever put any thought to the idea that all the ecological destruction we cause, just to feed the 7 billion animals of a handful of species, has destroyed far far far more species than it has "saved"?
There is no sensible answer, because your emotional attachment to the consumption of dead animals, and the very understandable resistance to the idea that you may have supported (and continue to support) needless cruelty of immense proportions has made you blind to "the negative consequences of [your] acts".
On the practical side, since you supposedly care so much about species: Have you ever put any thought to the idea that all the ecological destruction we cause, just to feed the 7 billion animals of a handful of species, has destroyed far far far more species than it has "saved"?