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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
they also got that lobster gun that does the choppy for you if you’re doing it in bulk or are squeamish
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
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.
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.
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
It’s about as massive a thing as plastic straws and that annyoing little tab in all caps now.
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.
Can you imagine, hahaa
Honestly not missing much. I don’t get all the fuss, plenty of other seafood that imo tastes loads better.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Ikr. They stopped the lobsters from being slowly boiled alive but not their own citizens lol
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…
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
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.