- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
- cross-posted to:
- world@quokk.au
Boiling lobsters while they are alive and conscious will be banned as part of a government strategy to improve animal welfare in England.
Government ministers say that “live boiling is not an acceptable killing method” for crustaceans and alternative guidance will be published.
The practice is already illegal in Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand. Animal welfare charities say that stunning lobsters with an electric gun or chilling them in cold air or ice before boiling them is more humane.
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Honestly that seems pretty reasonable. Boiling things alive is pretty barbaric.
I feel like chilling them is even worse. They usually live in cold waters, and chilling them in cold air (like a fridge) will just mostly make them suffocate for a while before you boil them alive. They can live a long time out of the water in a cold environment/on ice (think 24 to 48 hours long, not 2 or 3) because it just slows down their biological processes since they’re cold blooded. They’re just going to warm up again as they’re boiling, and it will probably take longer to start boiling as they have to come back up from a lower temperature.
Even the shock method seems kinda useless. It would need to knock them out for about 20 minutes to ensure that they’re unconscious until they’re dead.
The most humane thing to do would be to kill them somehow in one moment, like with a concussive force or stabbing through the brain stem, but that then runs into the issue of how quickly dead lobsters go bad (also the issue of presentation - people don’t want a crushed lobster staring at them from their plate). It’s actually illegal in plenty of places to sell dead lobsters (or even cook them!) due to this, so they would have to be killed on site just before being cooked, which is a tall order when 1lb of lobster meat requires about 5lbs of lobster to make (roughly about a 20% yield on lobsters) and it takes about 5 years for a lobster to reach 1lb in size (and then about 2 years for every pound after that).
All of this said, it’s all still probably more humane than that one company I used to work with back when I was in this kind of industry that was experimenting with getting raw lobster meat out of lobsters by tossing them into a pressure vessel.
Yeah, I don’t really have enough knowledge to offer a solution beyond “if we can’t kill them in a humane way, maybe we just don’t need to eat lobster.”
That was the conclusion I reached a little while ago. So I’ve just stopped eating shellfish as a result.
I’m now trying to reduce the amount of cow I eat.
The most humane thing to do would be to kill them somehow in one moment…
This is a thing.
https://easycleancook.com/how-to-kill-a-lobster-before-you-cook-it/
- The Rapid Destruction of the Central Nervous System
One of the most humane methods of killing a lobster is referred to as the “stabbing method.” This technique involves quickly severing the lobster’s central nervous system, ensuring a fast and painless death.
Procedure (tigger warning/NSFW?)
Prepare the Lobster: Place the lobster on its back on the cutting board. Hold it firmly but gently to stabilize it.
Identify the Right Spot: Locate the cross section of the lobster’s carapace (the hard shell) right behind the eyes. This spot contains nerve ganglia that, when severed, will cause a rapid death.
Make the Cut: Using a sharp chef’s knife, make a swift incision right at the identified spot. Aim for a clean, quick cut to ensure that the nervous system is disrupted immediately.
Confirm the Kill: After cutting, the lobster should not exhibit movement. If it does, wait for a few moments to ensure that the process has been effective.
Basically yeah, as you say, cut its brain stem.
There are chefs who know exactly how to do this, it just requires skill and precision.
This ia arguably the proper way to prepare and serve lobster, as, when done correctly… well, beyond being the most humane method, it also produces the most flavorful dish.
Agreed, and I vaguely remembered something along these lines from my time cooking them, but I also know how many that I was cooking in a day as just a small scale operation at a local fish market cooking and shucking for lobster meat and cooking for the occasional customer to take home with them (I think the most we did in a day was close to one metric ton), and how unfeasible it is to do on a large scale.
I was doing 50 lbs at a time per pot, with 2 large stovetop pots at a time. That’s 25+ lobsters per pot, averaging probably about 60 lobsters per hour that I was cooking by myself. Imagining trying to do that at an industrial scale sounds like the kind of thing that would effectively kill lobster meat as anything other than an expensive specialty item.
And although maybe it should kill mass market lobster meat (why in the hell does McDonald’s sell lobster rolls in the first place???), I also have a visceral gut reaction to the idea of effectively making a food the exclusive domain of the rich. Especially when my boss at that job would make a big stink about people buying fish with Social Security money like poor people don’t deserve to eat anything other than rice and beans.
Well dang, I appreciate the insight from someone who’s actually done it!
But uh… yeah… it really just does seem to be the case that America is run by people who hate poor people, who also become (at least in their own minds) not poor, by creating poor people, who run business models that encourage people to become poor.
Its like a tautological loop of ‘I’m scamming you and that makes me better than you’ as an ethos.
The pathological malignant narcissist society.
boiled potatoes are barbaric, agree. roasting and frying is the way to go
dumb
time to ban Halal slaughter now too!
https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/slaughter/religiousslaughter
I mean… its not really banning Halal slaughter.
Its adding a step to it.
Around 88% of animals slaughtered in the UK for Halal are stunned first. All animals slaughtered under the Shechita (for Kosher) are non-stunned.
Just gotta get that 88% up higher toward 100%, of stunning them (ie, obliterating their frontal lobe, I think?)… and also put that step into play for Kosher slaughter as well.
It frightens me that we can’t 100% agree that boiling a living thing that feels pain, is bad.
Humans are the worst.
Most killing involves pain, all meat requires killing.
And it should be instant. Not like the extreme polar end of those asian guys skinning a dog while it was still alive for the meat market.
✂️ this kills the crab
all plant eating is killing too
Correct. Scientists have done studies on vibrations from plants and they have a reaction to being cut and pulled that could be equated to a “pain” response.
Let’s suppose that you actually genuinely care about reducing the amount of plant suffering in the world. If this is the case, surely you would be vegan, because 3/4 of our total agricultural land is used to grow plants to support animal agriculture. (Since grass feels pain just like soybeans do, this includes pasture land.) So far fewer plants would be killed if everyone was vegan.
Of course, you don’t actually live your life in a manner consistent with believing plants feel pain. I don’t think anyone would think twice about swerving into some flowers to avoid a dog in the street for fear of causing suffering to the flowers.
far fewer plants would be killed if everyone was vegan.
I doubt this
That’s ok, totally understandable. Just read the comment again
still not convinced
How so? Have you seen the energy pyramid diagram?
The one I am referring to is specifically figure 2
much of what animals eat are parts of plants people can’t or won’t eat. I don’t actually believe any fewer plants would be harmed if people were vegan.
You’re talking to vegans not biologists or ecologists. They don’t have any idea how their food is grown, or what the ecosystem it’s grown in can support.
I’ll share your downvotes o7
Do you have any idea how many animals and bugs suffer at the hands of your monocultures in to produce soybeans and tofu? They destroy the habitat, poison the ground and the water, and make it impossible for most things to live on vast tracks of land. They interrupt migration patterns of larger animals.
You guys must all be small scale organic farmers like me! Surely if you cared about all life so much, you would be doing more of your personal space to accommodate? Shall we analyze your diet Friend? Let us discuss what you were eating and how you are acquiring it.
Cmon let’s be real, again this is a very simple trophic levels thing. If you truly care about the suffering of all the field mice and bugs and whatever being killed in soybean monocultures, and their other various environmental harms, then surely you would be vegan, because 75% of all soybeans grown globally are used as animal feed. (Source)
I truly care about the health of the planet and our many diverse eco-systems. I truly believe in the mountain of science on the subject. I truly believe in the laws of nature. The cycle of life and death that forms the eco-system. I think your vegan farming is just as bad as the meat farmers. Vast tracks of land poisoned to produce soy protein, fuel corn, palm oil and what ever else you need to create such an unnatural diet. I truly believe that eating food you produce and that is local to you is the real ethical choice. A healthy cow farm benefits the neighboring veggie farm, macro fauna increase biodiversity and manage plants. There’s a lot going on in the natural world, I’d rather not see it all get replaced by ignorance, self righteousness and Soylent.
a soybean is about 20% oil. about 85% of all soybeans are pressed for oil, that leaves about 69% of the total soybean crop as industrial waste if it’s not fed to animals. another 7% is fed directly to livestock. only 7% of all soybeans are grown for animals.
If you truly care about the suffering of all the field mice and bugs
they’re saying they don’t and neither does anyone else. it’s a silly concern: animals die, and humans eat animals.
75% of the weight of the crop is fed to animals, but 69% of the crop weight would be industrial waste if it wasn’t fed to animals. that’s a conservation of resources
all meat requires killing.
Technically not true… You could amputate and eat part of an animal without killing it
A TV reporter became lost on the back roads and stopped at a farm to get directions. As he was talking to the farmer he noticed a pig with a wooden leg. “This could be a great story for the Six O’Clock News. How did that pig lose his leg?” he asked the farmer. “Well”, said the farmer, “that’s a very special pig. One night not too long ago we had a fire start in the barn, and that pig squealed so loud and long that he woke everyone, and by the time we got there he had herded all the other animals out of the barn. Saved them all.”
“And that was when he hurt his leg?” asked the journalist anxious for a story. “Nope, he pulled through that just fine.” said the farmer. “Though a while later, I was back in the woods when a bear attacked me. Well, sir, that pig was nearby and he came running and rammed that bear from behind and then chased him off. He saved me for sure.”
“Wow! So the bear injured his leg then?” questioned the reporter. “No. He came away without a scratch. Though a few days later, my tractor turned over in a ditch and I was knocked unconscious. Well, that pig dove into the ditch and pulled me out before I got cut up in the machinery.” “Ahh! So his leg got caught under the tactor?” asked the journalist. “Noooo. We both walked away from that one.” says the farmer.
“So how did he get the wooden leg?” asked the journalist. “Well”, the farmer replied, “A pig that good you don’t eat all at once!"
So like harvesting claws from stone crabs?
Roadkill and scavenging exists. It’s pretty safe when done responsibly
How useful :p
Can you eat starfish?
Yes, you can.
Not true.
As at least one commenter said already, meat can be extracted without killing.
And further, you can wait for something to die of natural causes, and then you get the meat.
And now, arguably, “meat” can be made in a lab. Perhaps suppressed secret tech already has star-trek style replicators.
At least 3 distinct ways of meat without killing.
At a stretch… seeds and mushrooms can be considered/called “meat”.
Probably more ways yet I’ve not thought of.
You are so clever. Pardon me while I cook this bacon.
I hope the pig was dead, and you didn’t just gouge a chunk out of its buttocks.
[PS, Ima go run a mile from the idea of me being clever. I don’t wanna become that smugnorant and stupid.]
Have you ever seen felines hunting? They are fucking psychos by your standards.
Judging ourselves by what animals do is a wild take. I guess we’ve just all broadly stopped caring about being human sometime around when “alpha males” became a serious topic of discussion in human behavior.
In case you didn’t know, we are animals.
We should always keep that in mind and stop pretending “being human” is some universal thing.
I’ve heard a lot of the world’s worst people use that as an excuse to do the most horrible things, and I despair that so many people readily embrace it as a validation.
We are animals but we are different than every other animal, and we can be better and do better, and if holding yourself to a higher standard because you were born with sapience is too inconvenient, I’m sure there are some political and ideological groups out there who would love to have you.
edit: I regret spending any time responding to the obvious trolls in this post. Block and move on people. If you ever find yourself having to argue that we’re better than animals, you’re not arguing with someone participating in good faith.
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You sound insufferable
😎
I don’t engage with kids trying to troll, get lost.
Stay safe in your bubble.
To be very crass, animals also rape other animals, and I hope to god that you will not use “but we are animals” as an argument there as well.
We are different from other animals in that we are moral agents. We can know the difference between good and bad. That makes us responsible to act upon that difference, too.
You think very lowly of other animals if you think they have no morals, or no discerning of good and bad.
Or are you valuing your specific moral more than theirs? Because that’s a very classic specist reasoning, with no basis whatsoever except human arrogance.
Also, humans rape other humans too, so how do you justify this? Are rapists not moral agents? You consider them beasts, different animals than yourself?
Then what makes a human a human, what makes them the moral agent you talk about? Is it the respect of the law? Is it a particular neurological state?
More importantly, do you really need this sort of validation to be “good”? Do you need to believe that you are different? That you have a responsibility? That you are “better” than other animals?
Are you not capable of being equally “good” even knowing that morals are relative? That there is no actual universal good? That you have nothing more than other animals?
They get a free pass because they are cute.
Cats are neither human, nor do they boil their kills just because they can. Cats kill, yes. Cats are murderous little fuckers, yes.
However the issue the above poster is talking about isn’t about killing of whatever. Or about eating meat. Their point was about doing it in as humane a way as possible.
We don’t boil lobsters just because we can, but because we cook our food.
Cats are neither human, nor do they boil their kills just because they can.
But, we all know they would if they could.
I said felines by the way, so cats AND all others too.
Have you ever seen lions hunting their prey and eating it from its ass while it is still trying to run away?
Or playing with their prey before eventually strangling it?
That’s their way of doing it, it’s gruesome but it’s fine.
We have our own ways of doing it too, some methods are even considerably more painless than others.
Also you should note your own use of “humane”, that’s a key point there. All this talk is just human specist nonsense.
Last but not least, I could even argue (as a human) that it’s ridiculous to judge what killing method is acceptable (and even what is acceptable to eat) based on things like pain, or having a nervous system.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR SPECIST CRINGE ARGUMENTS! Killing a human, a lobster, a mosquito or a tomato plant is just killing, no matter what lies you tell yourself.
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Fuck. What hope is there for my verbose replies then…
Curse the twittification tiktokification of our minds.
There’s some kind of wisdom and (albeit self-serving) kindness to how felines kill things (sometimes). Whereby they get their prey to settle into their fate, and calm down, before they go in for the kill. Seemingly because all that adrenaline and muscle tension makes the meat taste worse, and impairs their mood and feels after eating it.
Have you ever seen felines hunting?
Devastating scenes. CW: I’m going to eat you little fishy
Yeah. I kinda like meat, but seriously. At least make it quick and/or painless, not torture.
Imagine how vegans must feel about the world lol
Vegans don’t care about the natural world with regards to suffering caused by the natural world itself. That’s just how things are.
Vegans instead are more interested in suffering caused by humans inflicted on the natural world. This suffering can be more or less wicked than what you’d find out in the wild.
Big distinction.
Inb4 plants feel just as much pain, just differently
Yeah but they are masochists and they like it.
Time to chew rocks
In that moral framework ig fruits and veggies would be fine since the plant wants us to eat it
there is no proof plants want anything
Pretty sure we’re supposed to surgically extract the seeds after anaesthetizing the fruits whilst it’s still on the tree.
I don’t know much about it but Jains in India actually have rules about causing minimal harm to all living things
You monster!
Pretty poorly, all things considered.
pain isn’t bad.
you are projecting your fear of pain onto other animals.
also you are implying animals that kill and ate other animals, are bad. there is no morality outside of human societies
Yes, and we humans clearly live outside of human societies and thus we shouldn’t hold ourselves to human moral standards.
It’s cute how we set ourselves apart from nature, and use terms like “humane” to mean better, refined, less brutal, yet the moment that notion might even slightly inconvenience us, then we’re just animals.
Humanity? Pfft, fuck that! We’re just animals. We’re like cats, or dolphins!
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Since you point out that there is (allegedly) morality in human societies, let’s try to act on it, no?
which animal can 100% agree woth you on that? maybe crabs but even then maybe not
LOL-Ouch!
Reading this
It frightens me that we can’t 100% agree that boiling a living thing that feels pain, is bad.
Humans are the worst.
the very next thing after having just finished writing:
provided that you didn’t consider humans animals
And it’s daunting how many people are in a popularised fervour of seeing their misanthropy as a virtue, unwitting of the historical company they keep; unwitting of the totalitarianising psyche they have more than a toe in with that shit. Nor how dangerous and wrong and deluding that is. Horrors, even the worst horrors, propped up with fallacies in service of inverting reality, making atrocities seen as necessary virtues. Especially the animals=good people=bad crowd.
The worst, eh?
Maybe study more nature before throwing around such dangerous hyperbole.
Doesnt the UK eat tons of veal? Seems like if youre gonna pretend to care about animals that would be a prime target but what do I know?
Will always be funny to me that lobsters are such an expensive delicacy at fine dining restaurants when they started out as food for extremely poor people in coastal communities. In the old days the general public viewed eating them as you would view eating a rat today.
Oysters have made the switch between poor people food and rich people food quite a few times. Tuna has made the switch in my lifetime. It probably has something to do with how easy they are to harvest/catch when plentiful versus the results of overfishing, and how delicate the food is in the supply chain.
Bacon also, it used to be cheap as fuck. Same with chicken wings. Two of the cheapest parts of the animal, now magically nearly the most expensive.
Its both here, cooking bacon is the cheapest boneless meat I have ever seen per weight. But you can also get pretty fancy expensive bacon choices too.
Pork chops are cheaper than bacon.
They aren’t here. At least not the cheapest bacon.
what are you talking about. bacon and chicken wings are cheap. almost every other desirable cut of pig/chicken is more expensive. chicken wings are often 1-2 dollars a lb.
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where i live chicken breasts are 8 dollars a lb. bacon is like 5 bucks for really nice stuff. chicken wings are 2 bucks. thighs are 6 dollars. pork tenderloin is 9.
Where are you getting wings that cheap? They’re usually like $3-4 a lb in the south and bacon is usually $6+ a lb…only if you grab it in bulk does bacon go down to like $3.50ish and you’re buying the rejection stuff that doesn’t look pretty but still tastes fine.
the grocery store.
There’s a theory that carbonara used to be a “war time” food.
Give the tech bros long enough and rat will be a delicacy for the rest of us aswell
It always comes back to demolition man
Not looking forward to the clamshells… maybe lobster claws could be a cheap alternative?
Lobster is only ok. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything with lobster in it that wasn’t independently good, or improved in any meaningful way with lobster.
That said, when lobster was viewed the way you’re describing, it was seen as more of a pest. There was so much lobster freely available, it was literally piling up on beaches. No one was fishing for lobsters, they were just scooping them up and then making a rather revolting stew with them. That was being served to prisoners as a form of penance, meant to be bland and unstimulating. Sandy guts and all.
There are several types of lobsters. US Red lobster has nothing to do with the big blue ones they have here in fancy restaurants.
While they were called ‘sea rats’,they werent considered quiteas bad as rats- it was common for servant’s contracts to limit the number of meals lobster could be served to them for, usually 1 or 2 a week, not the hard 0 that serving rat would have been.
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UK government caring more about lobster welfare than that of trans people.
I don’t think you’re allowed to boil trans people alive either
You certainly shouldn’t be eating them
I mean you can eat them if you know what I mean
The bad thing is that these goals do not conflict with each other: they could easily do both if they wanted to.
Maybe time to start identifying as a lobster…
Is this a poorly executed joke or whataboutism.
Not just “trans people”.
Just people.
Not the only category suffering their cruelty and indifference.
I’ve survived several rounds of the culls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VvRz8HrEVKY
No fun being dependent on your abuser trying to include you in their democide.
The amount of people that are in knots trying to defend a barbaric practice is quite telling.
Chopping down plants & eating them is also barbaric.
Do plants feel pain the way a lobster would? I genuinely don’t know.
I do know that making an animal suffer rather than giving it a quick death is wrong.
Do plants feel pain?
From what I’ve read so far, unfortunately, it seems like they might. Plants can communicate with each other and form underground resource networks with other plants, fungi, and microorganisms. Including for illness, boring bugs and pain responses. The smell of fresh cut grass is one of those warning/pain responses.
I’ve wanted to do some bonsai succulents, but the process towards any living thing seems cruel and painful.
You only quoted part of their question. Yes, plants react to pain, but that doesn’t mean they feel pain the same way a lobster does.
We cannot measure pain for neither plants nor animals. You presuppose the feelings of the animal while at the same time rejecting it for the plant when we really do not know.
Do they require a nervous system? Maybe. To what extent? We do not know.
No, I’m simply going by my best guess, informed by what I know about the current state of research. That’s not conclusive evidence, but it is morally incredibly hard to argue against it.
After all, I cannot measure pain for humans besides myself. You may just be a philosophical zombie. When I’m treating you like you can experience pain, I’m presupposing your feelings. What if you’re programmed to act scared of pain & secretly wish to experience it?
I do not know. Does that mean you may have a lesser pain experience than plants? How should that affect my decision making?
No, you are at best basing your opinion on measured pain response in order to determine the level of pain experienced. Many animals have a measured pain reaction. You also know of your own experienced pain and assume it in other people and animals while excluding plants.
The first part is scientific and the second is not. The problem is that you are acting like your belief about how animals feel pain is qualitatively different from the above regarding plants.
We both know why you get agressive about it: You want to some extent anthropomorphize animals because you care about them, which is ok, but not scientific.
Now this I can agree with.
Yes agreed so lets just starve then, only proper thing to do
Just learn to photosynthesize like that guy obviously does
Nah, you starve. You’re the one who’s into that stuff.
You’ll avoid eating carrion and probiotics and fallen fruit and seeds and nuts? Did you simply overlook other possibilities than harming living things?
I’m daunted by the possibility some may fall for that false dichotomy, and not mean it in jest.
Don’t have to be a failed breatharian.
Can be fruitarian.
Seeds and nuts are offspring. Carrion/Roadkill is caused by unsafe/Subaru infrastructure standards and not practical as a law dir everyone without killing a lot of people. Fruit are somewhat fair game, but could also be eaten by wild animals and are unnatural cruel breeds.
Avoiding all suffering is embracing death for all. Existing is suffering by necessity.
Some seeds (~ and some nuts?) require/want(?) to be imbibed and crapped out, to spread the offspring further, strip the germination inhibiting layer, and provide fertiliser for.
Avoiding all suffering is embracing death for all. Existing is suffering by necessity.
Though be careful with that, otherwise suffering can be made a fetish.
there is no proof seeds or nuts want anything at all
hence the “(?)” on that linguistic quirk.
though, some evolutionary biologists and others still would use that expression, that shorthand, without flinching.
No, it fucking ain’t.
And it’s also not a funny joke.
Curious response.
Indifferent, dismissive, in denial, about the suffering of plants? Speciesist? Just never been introduced to plants, be it with plant medicine, or scientific studies? Plants feel. Just because it’s not expressed in familiar mammalian ways, does not mean they’re not living feeling beings. Seeing chopping down plants and eating them as barbaric is a valid perspective to take. I wonder if you have anything above contradiction on Graham’s Hierarchy of Disagreement to make your argument have any compelling substance…? Or if this will just remain as a limbic reflex to preserve self image, without entertaining the idea in curiosity. Come, get curious, not furious. :)
[Edit: Oh wow. Just saw the up/down votes ratio on that “Chopping down plants & eating them is also barbaric.” comment. At time of writing, up 8, down 55! Wow. Presumably a lot of other people also kicking off all reflexive in defence of their magnanimous morally-superior identification/self-image (presumably) being vegetarian or whatever. Face the horror, folks. 'Ain’t the angels promoted to be in that moral relativism and speciesistical ignorance. LOL. (Cue all the more down votes on this comment, due to this edit clashing with those who’ll still double down in wilful ignorance refusing to look into this. Hehehehehe).]
Cause it’s a stupid fucking argument.
If consumption of plants is unethical extinction of life is the only moral choice.
Allow me to upvote you👌
Id say the distinguishing difference is the function being the thing, where suffering relies on the set of distributed tools being used to measure and process suffering.
Many people excuse animal suffering by denying these parts exist, despite being basal and meadurable even in fish.
While I do think to some degree you are right, and we should be careful where we bound expected suffering, but eating a plant is much more like eating a disembodied part of an animal, or cell culture, rather than the full animal nervous experience.
At the very least, near the bottom of the triage. Its a constant energy balancing act as we progress as intelligent life. Also case by case as different eco-niches are fit. Don’t underestimate life and intelligence.
This is coming from a perspective inspired by Michael levin from tufts university, in the understanding of diverse intelligent systems.
Isn’t it time you checked in on Carol?
Uh, does anyone in this thread even know how to kill a lobster?
I feel like this is barely a problem, you usually slice into its head and then immediately boil to avoid any chance of rapid bacteria breakdown. I dont even know if theres any other practical method aside from boiling without slicing into the head.
Also not to be that guy, but is this really such a massive concern that the government needs to focus on right now? Seems like they are more concerned about handling lobsters than their own citizens after they labeled Palestine Action a terrorist group and had anyone supporting them arrested and charged as such.
Maybe the citizens have been asking for them to deal with lobbyists and they just misheard
I do think it’d be more humane to not boil lobbyists alive. We can find less grotesque ways to dispatch them.
I for one think it’s highly appropriate
I think boiling is a little too traditional for me. Personally I think the good old fashioned French methods cut just right, you know?
I worked at a country club that would, occasionally, and on the hush hush for VIPS inject them still live, with a syringe of boiling butter, poaching them from the inside out. I believe that is the old fashioned French method
You can have more than one law being established at once.
There has been systematic reduction in the humanities/philosophy, arts, literature etc. In countries. The affect it has is a society focused on work and compliance with status quo. (The USA is actively destroying their own system purposly)
A law ending cruelty should be celebrated as a glimmer of hope that we as a society are still capably of thinking at a higher level, that we are still questioning life, and meanings around it. If we cease to do those things we will be a dead automata society that lives only to work.
Killed a lobster? I’ve never even tasted one. Sounds like a rich people problem.
Lobsters used to be poor people’s food. The taste is really just giant shrimp.
1800s new England, they were refered to as sea rats, and it was a common clause in servants contracts limiting how many meals a week they could be given lobster.
it was a common clause in servants contracts limiting how many meals a week they could be given lobster
Can you imagine, hahaa
Honestly not missing much. I don’t get all the fuss, plenty of other seafood that imo tastes loads better.
Also not to be that guy, but is this really such a massive concern that the government needs to focus on right now?
Labour is flailing. They came into office with an enormous popular mandate to undo the corrupt and abusive practices of the Conservative government, then proceeded to extend and cement these same unpopular policies while engaging in all the same corrupt practices - in many cases taking money and gifts from the exact same people.
This is what they’ve got. Haphazardly pandering to any special interest group that won’t step on the toes of a mega-donor or trip over graft being committed by another influential MP.
Seems like they are more concerned about handling lobsters than their own citizens after they labeled Palestine Action a terrorist group and had anyone supporting them arrested and charged as such.
AIPAC fully has its hooks into the Labour government, especially at the leadership level. In many ways, the sanction on boiled lobster and the sanction on Palestine Rights activists is coming from the same place. A need to crank up policing on everyone everywhere for anything that can justify a government sanction.
The UK police state is metasticizing again.
Most people don’t cook lobster and those that do cook it once a year.
No, they don’t know how to kill a lobster. They buy it at the store, it sits in the fridge for half a day or two an they toss in in boiling water.
I feel like most people who actually cook live lobsters know what they are doing. Who else buys a live lobster?
Anyone with a few bucks and a grocery store nearby that carries them? I am happy to say that this is pretty rare. As a kid in the 90’s it felt like every grocery store had live lobsters for sale.
My middle school home economics teacher told us the story of her cooking lobster for the first time. She thought they killed them for you when you get them at the grocery store.
She got home and opened the bag to find two live lobsters. The only pot she had big enough was glass. She watched those two lobsters boil to death and never had lobster again.
It’s such a non issue to dispatch a lobster before throwing it into the pot using your method. The guys who are against it are just fucking assholes.
Lobsters have a decentralized nervous system, so stabbing it in the head doesn’t really do anything. It’s pretty much just something chefs started doing to appear to know more than the home cook. There’s no scientific reason for stabbing them first.
So then not only are you still boiling them alive, but you are also causing a lot of pain by unnecessarily stabbing their face off?
This is why the correct method is splitting, where you cut the head in half down the middle and partway into the main body. Cutting the head off still leaves a significant chuck of the “brain” alive and unwell.
This is how I found out that lobsters don’t have a single centralized brain like humans do.
Lobster as Lemmy mascot when?
So, how WOULD you kill it without pain?
Not at all would be fine.
Sure. But, like, is this law pointless? Because unless it bans it altogether (and the comment I replied to is correct about the pain) then it sounds like it’s pointless.
People said freezing. But that just sounds like more psuedo science. Is it science based? Or is it just “people say”.
Freezing just slows them down. A lot of lobsters are caught in the Atlantic around Maine, they can handle your fridge just fine, and your freezer for a painfully long amount of time.
Give them a shot of morphine first
Lol I could see this becoming a delicacy- lobster that gets you high when you eat it
Ikr. They stopped the lobsters from being slowly boiled alive but not their own citizens lol
focus
How much “focus” does something like this actually require?
Two ways to dispatch a lobster.
One is to put the knife behind the eyes, stab down and chop towards the front of the lobster, bifurcating the head.
The other is to put the lobster in the freezer for 30-45 minutes. This slows its metabolism to the point of practical death, so it doesnt feel anything when you put it in the boiling water.
second option is less…actively choppy, so i imagine most squeemish people would prefer that option.
oof i’d take the head chop over being rapidly frozen and then boiled, thanks
Cause you’re not cold blooded, or a lobster. So you don’t have the same response to it that they do.
Valid point but you cant prove that im not either of those things
i can’t prove you’re not coffee either
they also got that lobster gun that does the choppy for you if you’re doing it in bulk or are squeamish
Worked at Red Lobster back in the 90s. The cook would just flip it over, split it down the middle and gut it. 5 seconds, it’s dead as a rock.
Yeah they also do things like that with other animals also, the point of the legislation is we have science showing animals (and fish also after bad science before) feel pain. And we are far enough in history where we can be a kinder species.
The best I know is to freeze them first, not like solid, but just for an hour or so which makes them super lethargic.
You can just put them in the fridge. They don’t need to be in the freezer.
Then drive a knife through their head. Dead before they know what’s happening.
It’s about as massive a thing as plastic straws and that annyoing little tab in all caps now.
i guess the moral question is whether that’s arguably significantly more humane than skipping the severing step. to me it seems possibly unknowable; either way the thing does suffer the slaughter and the question is to what degree. if there’s any culinary or other practical advantage to doing it, and folks believe it’s more humane, why not…
Good. This may seem like a joke now but slowly over decades people will stop doing this.
With this administration’s track record, I’m half expecting this to turn out to be the justification for putting “lobster-verification” cameras in everyone’s kitchen.
It’s just silly that this is still a thing in almost 2026. It’s so obvious even Hitler banned it, and he was no animal rights activist.
He actually was, despite his horrific treatment of human beings.
More formally, on May 15, 1942, the Nazis issued an order instructing all Jews to bring all of their pets to collection points where they would be euthanized.
Of course if animals were in the care of the “wrong” human beings then they had to be killed. Fascist ideology has always, and will always, be an incoherent mess of contradictions in service of bigotry.
PETA expanded on that by declaring all humans to be the wrong kind.
Well, I’ll be damned.
I’ll need to read up on this.
Hitler was a maniac and a despicable person, but I seem to remember reading that he was vegetarian and at least liked dogs. Maybe he was an animal rights activist, provided that you didn’t consider humans animals.
provided that you didn’t consider humans animals
And it’s daunting how many people are in a popularised fervour of seeing their misanthropy as a virtue, unwitting of the historical company they keep; unwitting of the totalitarianising psyche they have more than a toe in with that shit. Nor how dangerous and wrong and deluding that is. Horrors, even the worst horrors, propped up with fallacies in service of inverting reality, making atrocities seen as necessary virtues. Especially the animals=good people=bad crowd.
Please stop using "even Hitler … " It just doesn’t work.
even Hitler banned it
That’s kinda interesting.
What reasoning did that govt. have?
Culinary school recommended a quick kitchen knife through the brain immediately before boiling
whoa, you mean sentient animals feel pain?? WHAT!?
Nah, the screaming in horror is just air escaping /s
Lobsters don’t have vocal cords. Its physically impossible for them to scream.
Ok but that isn’t really the point they were making
That was literally a point they made.
pushes glasses Well akshually… 🤓
So exhausting. I can’t believe we have to explain boiling animals alive is animal cruelty, against a sea of “bugs lol who cares” and joking about inconsequential details. It’s sad
I would hardly call crustaceans sentient, let alone conscious. FFS, they hardly have brains.
You’re confusing sentience with self-awareness
While they are alive and conscious.
That’s why I fill my lobsters with propofol before cooking them. People always say my dinner parties are a snooze. I don’t know why, I always have a good time. Of course, I don’t eat lobster.
From what I’ve been told lobsters will release a toxin if not killed properly. Boiling alive is/was the easiest way to do it and thus widely adopted especially at consumer level.
Quickly in the sense that bacterial growth on them becomes toxic within a far shorter time than other things we eat. Bacteria isn’t growing in the 10 seconds it takes to kill them and then dump into the pot. Just don’t leave them laying around for a long time.
Apparently it’s not easy to kill lobsters. They don’t have a single brain that you can drive a nail through like mammals, AFAIK.
One of the researchers who showed that lobsters feel pain recommended freezing them as the best available method, but maybe it’s better to just stop eating them?
Edit: the article says that electrical stunning works.
Electrical stunning isn’t an option for home chefs. I have heard of chilling but not sure if that is also being banned in the UK or not, given that they would still be alive. And yeah, no idea how reliable someone is going to be in actually killing it and not just rendering it unable to move but still feeling everything.
Even if a perfect knife cut works, how precise do you need to be? The best method would be the one which is pretty easy to do successfully. Also what about other crustaceans?
Freezing is an interesting method. Humans, being warm blooded, have a hard time in the cold. A lot of cold blooded animals just slow down when they get cold. I’ve no idea how it works for lobsters though, would be interesting to know.
Yeah that is how I understand it too. Could freeze them to death I presume, not sure how easy it is to kill them by freezing and not turn them into a solid block, or if you did freeze them solid how different it is to cook from frozen.
I can get free crab if I catch them myself, usually small ones but I have seen spider crabs at the shore. But prawns are tiny, even a shore crab has more meat than a prawn. Then use left overs for stock?
Nah, they don’t release a toxin, at least not in the sense of “self-defense” that is usually meant with that phrase. After death they rot very quickly, so they do become toxic, I guess that’s similar enough. My dad cooked lobsters often and he always stuck a paring knife in a very specific spot in the head right before boiling, I assume this information is about to become much more widespread to comply with these new laws.
Put them on ice to slow/sleep them, then slice through the center on the head with a sharp knife.
But their feelings!
It’s a fucking bug! Boil it and eat the shit already.
I worked at Red Lobster for a number of years as a young’un. A large part of my work in the prep kitchen initially (after I graduated from the dish ring) was to slice live Maine lobs in half to make “princess lobsters” (half a lobster with body cavity stuffed with yummy). These stupid bugs are no more sentient than a cockroach that you smash with a shoe.
Why would anyone spend even a second considering the feelings of a fucking bug?!
The science would tend to disagree with you.
All the evidence points to the fact that lobsters do feel pain in the same way humans do. As they’re being boiled alive they release significant amounts of cortisol, the same as us.
Bug or not, it is sentient. If we are going to insist on eating them then we have a moral responsibility to minimise their suffering before we do.
To be fair they didn’t deny it had feelings, they made it clear they don’t care about their feelings.
The same? That’s a completely unbelievable conclusion to reach. The priorities of some people seems like mental illness to me.
Humans and other mammals release cortisol as part of the pain response.
So do lobsters.
They feel pain when they are boiled alive.
That alone should be enough information for a sane person to think “huh, if they feel pain maybe I should put in a small amount of effort to make sure they don’t suffer when I kill them” instead of trying to justify why it’s ok and use thinly veiled insults aimed at those of us who don’t think animals suffering from avoidable pain is acceptable.
Disregarding the pain of something just because it doesnt have a cute face or fur is far more evidence of mental illness tbh.
The presence of cortisol does not mean that the experience of pain is equitable between humans and lobsters.
It certainly indicates it. It’s certainly a much more plausible explanation than not feeling anything. Fucking strawman argument so thst you can, what, save 2 minutes of your time and not have to kill it humanely?
No, it doesn’t indicate that. It only shows that cortisol is present in both, it doesn’t conclude anything about the subjective experience. You can’t even say ‘pain’ is what the lobster experiences, or what the nature of lobster experience even is. Even humans don’t all feel pain the same way, some even enjoy the experience.
We used to perform surgery on infant humans without anaesthetics because we believed them to be lesser beings incapable of feeling pain. Scientific consensus shifted.
With enough evidence. The presence of cortisol doesn’t prove a lobster’s subjective experience is equitable to humans. Furthermore, that consensus can shift again so even current science isn’t settled, science is never settled.
I suppose I didn’t really express my point. Is it just not better to err on the side of caution? I’m not saying to not eat lobster, people dictating what others should and shouldn’t eat is a massive pet-peeve of mine, but it’s not hard to find alternative prep suggestions that don’t really add much in the way of effort, that’s thought to be more humane.
Personally, I don’t think lobsters experience the world the same way we do. The notion is ridiculous from a physiological standpoint. But it’s equally ridiculous, and reeks of a more or less biblical human exceptionalist perspective, to assume that humans alone possess various traits that are evolutionarily advantageous, like for example the sensation of pain.
And if we’re down to splitting hairs about “well the way other animals feel pain is different” then we’re in purely philosophical territory. Rather akin to “how do I know that the colour I view as green is the same thing you view as green?”
Do you waffle about before taking a slipper to the roach that snuck in under your door-jamb? No, you smash that repugnant shit and scoop it up with a piece of junk mail to toss it in the toilet. That sentient bug is just not food to you. The fact that a lobster is food does not make it a more elevated being.
“The fact that a lobster is food does not make it a more elevated being”
And I never said it did. I said the fact that it has an observable and measurable pain response makes it a more elevated being.
Lobsters are sentient, the science has proven it. They might be on the lower end but they have also been shown to demonstrate a limited form of memory and intelligence when it comes to things like pain, avoiding objects that are known to cause it.
I get not caring, but mate, you sound like an absolute psychopath who takes delight in killing them.
You are missing the point dude. Boiling alive is slow torture, they are not sa…
Fuck it good luck with your reading comprehension skills
I also don’t waffle about a shoe on a cockroach, in fact I try my best to kill them as fast as possible and in any case will choose a shoe to spray, which takes longer. No point in making anyone or anything squirm in agony over several minutes unless I have a personal vendetta against them.
No, you smash that repugnant shit
Sounds like a very quick way to kill it.
I feel the need to point out that the person you’re arguing with is not saying you shouldn’t kill lobsters.
There is no living creature, plant or animal, that doesn’t have feedback systems that inform on injury and damage. It may not be in a form that we recognize as pain, but in effect that is what it is.
Nothing lives without affecting the lives of other creatures, but we can do our best to minimize suffering. For lobsters it’s probably ideal to freeze or shock them, as mentioned in the article.
Are bugs not sentient? It’s settled: we need welfare laws for bugs. No more pesticides.
What part of “don’t torture an animal to death” is it you struggle with?
You sound like one of those disturbed kids that pull legs off of bugs or slowly crush various body parts until it stops moving.
If you’re gonna kill something, give it a swift death with minimal suffering. It’s really not that complicated.
Lobsters aren’t bugs
So, you don’t care about the suffering of bugs? Seems inconsistent & immoral.
Aww you got me.
Nothing i like more than gathering up an entire ants nest and forcing them to watch as I torture the queen by sticking pins into her.
Then when she finally does croak it, I force the other ants into a battle royale.
When there’s one survivor, I crown him king ant. Then boil him alive and serve him with butter.
Good for you on that. Do you imagine pesticides as mentioned before are humane?
Depends on the method.
I know what you’re trying to do mate.
If it turned out that insects felt pain and we were killing them off in the most brutal way possible for no reason then I wouldn’t be happy about it.
But they don’t, and we aren’t.
Tell me this. Knowing that lobsters feel pain, that there are humane methods of killing them that are quick and don’t involve them slowly being boiled alive and don’t make any fucking difference to what comes next, why exactly are you trying to defend the practice by painting those of us who don’t agree with it out to be hypocrites?
Seriously, do you WANT them to suffer? Or are you just being contrarian for the sake of argument.
Wouldn’t electrocution be painful too?
Probably. Being electrocuted can range anywhere from insanely painful to death in 0.1 seconds depending on the ampage
What if they feel every moment? Can’t go out of your way for 2 minutes to potentially reduce the suffering?
Yes, they feel every moment until the knife slices their pea-sized nerve center of a brain in half. That took about 1/2 of a second. It’s done and now we can eat.
Your original comment made it seem as though you were not slicing their pea-brains in half, just boiling them alive (this was cleared up in your follow-up).
Having said that, there may be worse ways to go. In the first season of Shogun they put a guy in a large cauldron of water and slowly brought it up to a boil.
But then I remember that MrBallen story where the guy was pushed into an NYC storm drain and was steamed alive for several minutes in agony. From what I remember, steam isn’t like fire where your nerves are essentially cauterized do you can’t feel anything. You have to suffer through every minute of it.
Let’s just agree to all show each other the courtesy of a knife to the brain.
Lobsters don’t have a centralised brain. Shows just how much you know about lobsters.
No matter how many of them you have killed and cooked, that clearly doesn’t make you a biology expert…
So basically everything you said, can be discarded as an uninformed garbage opinion.
We need welfare laws for bugs now. No more pesticides.
Bro you sound like an absolute psychopath.
If somebody is saying that to you (like right now) perhaps you should reflect on what you’ve said
I’ve worked in restaurants, so I’m used to a certain level of psychopathising among chefs. I don’t know if it’s changed in the last two decades, but in that context I interpreted their comment as being slightly grumpy at being told how to do their jobs.
If they gleefully talked about using the live animal as a sex toy, for example, that would arrive in my brain as an allusion to romantic difficulties.
Just putting that out there. The whole argument looks like cultural differences to me. I don’t think any chef would actually prefer animal cruelty… I did once hear a maître’d joke that cruelty makes food taste better, though.
They prefer animal cruelty in the “I had to do it, so you should too!” kind of way.
Okay, so I have a guy in a chef hat fucking a lobster image in my head. Thanks….
A spoonful of sugar, I always say
58 downvotes
They hated him because he spoke the truth.
Because people have gone just as far to the left as those to the right. Meanwhile the rest of us are just trying to live our lives with what little we have yet somehow everything we do to make our living easier is an inconvenience to those on both extremes.
This is a left/right thing?!! WTF? This just a food thing and if you are left/righting it you are a world-class dolt!
Nah, people that say this (horseshoe theory etc) are exclusively right wing and are grasping at straws to claim we’re just like them.
Which we’re not.
I’d even kill Nazis quickly.
They believe compassion and empathy are “woke”
with what little we have
Like lobster.
Who will think about the poor individuals that can only afford lobster and a pot, but not a freezer?
I mean…this should be framed as an attempt at fixing an urban myth: that lobster tastes best when cooked alive.
I worked in restaurants for years and we always killed them quickly and humanely before we boiled them.
To me this is just low hanging fruit.
