No Ethical Consumption Under Capitalism

The argument that there is no such thing as ethical consumption under capitalism, and that as such buying a veggie burger is equivalent in wrongness to buying a beef burger is a common argument among anti-capitalist meat eaters against going vegan.

This argument draws from one of two major logical fallacies:

False Equivalence

A false equivalence is often drawn from mistakes such as denying the role of Individual Responsibility in a system where multiple parties are at play in harm. In this case the error is very similar, but rather than deem all parties innocent for lack of responsibility, all parties are deemed guilty for being part of the system and unjustly denied credit for attempting to do less based on the erroneous claim that it's completely ineffective. In either case, the denial is used as an excuse for people to behave in any way they prefer (such as consuming animal products) because either nobody is to blame or we're all guilty anyway no matter what.

Beyond this if the anti-capitalist recognizes that indeed individuals can have an effect and are owed credit for it, the claim may be made that indeed veggie burgers and beef burgers are precisely equal in harm. From the flawed perspective of Deontology, that claim can be at least somewhat consistent: in a deontological system wrong is wrong, and there are no inherent degrees or weights to different wrongs -- lying is as murder, and you can't lie to save somebody's life or even a billion people's lives. However, from any form of consequentialism (from utilitarianism to forms of rule consequentialism and virtue ethics) the claim of their equivalency is impossible to substantiate without severely distorting reality.

"In the most objective environmental terms, there is no comparison. Burgers like the Beyond burger have been confirmed by independent study[1] to by substantially better on all meaningful metrics.

Beyond Meat commissioned the Center for Sustainable Systems at University of Michigan to conduct a “cradle-to-distribution” life cycle assessment of the Beyond Burger, a plant-based patty designed to look, cook and taste like fresh ground beef. The purpose of the study is to compare environmental impacts – chosen here as greenhouse gas emissions, cumulative energy demand (energy use), water use, and land use – with those from typical beef production in the U.S. A secondary purpose is to highlight opportunities for improvement in the environmental performance of the Beyond Burger product chain and provide Beyond Meat with a benchmark against which improvement efforts can be measured. The primary audiences are both internal stakeholders at Beyond Meat as well as external customers, consumers, and interested stakeholders.

[...]

Based on a comparative assessment of the current Beyond Burger production system with the 2017 beef LCA by Thoma et al, the Beyond Burger generates 90% less greenhouse gas emissions, requires 46% less energy, has >99% less impact on water scarcity and 93% less impact on land use than a ¼ pound of U.S. beef."

Appeal To Futility

Just because it's impossible to avoid all wrong (futility) doesn't mean we have no duty to lessen harm. Any difference in harm between two options creates a moral imperative to choose the less harmful one.