Forget consciousness. We don't care. Our institutions don't care.
Do I much bother that my cheese-burger with bacon necessitates the 'processing' of two mammals with 1lb brains each with 20 billion neurons? That the cheese requires fermented lactation involving stealing away the offspring? I just want my apex predator protein.
Technology and industry exist to funnel more credits onto the balance sheets of the ambitious. Boss takes all no matter the lesser consciousness snuffed out.
As we embark on the grand experiment of instantiating billions of machine models here there and everywhere. Who cares whether they are in fact even a little conscious ?
Who cares if when a digital simulation of C. elegans is instantiated whether the simulated neurons are achieving the same spark as the real thing recently crushed under foot.
Institutions fund utility and ROI. If they would study precisely where on the taxonomy of Animalia - consciousness emerges, we could perhaps better know which demons we are inadvertently summoning into existence.