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.

  • citizensongbird@lemmy.world
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    11 hours ago

    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.

    • AxExRx@lemmy.world
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      4 hours ago

      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.

    • SippyCup@lemmy.ml
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      5 hours ago

      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.

    • exasperation@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 hours ago

      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.

      • lobut@lemmy.ca
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        6 hours ago

        There’s a theory that carbonara used to be a “war time” food.

      • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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        10 hours ago

        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.

        • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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          8 hours ago

          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.

          • Horsecook@sh.itjust.works
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            7 hours ago

            At my grocery store, pork tenderloin and chicken wings are $6/lb, and pork shoulder or chicken breasts are $3/lb. Bacon starts at $5/lb for the scraps.

            • TubularTittyFrog@lemmy.world
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              7 hours ago

              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.

          • SupraMario@lemmy.world
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            7 hours ago

            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.

        • Korhaka@sopuli.xyz
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          9 hours ago

          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.