Posted on 01/13/2018 6:55:50 PM PST by DUMBGRUNT
The Swiss Federal Council issued an order this week banning cooks in Switzerland from placing live lobsters into pots of boiling water – joining a few other jurisdictions that have protections for the decapod crustaceans. Switzerland’s new measure stipulates that beginning March 1, lobsters must be knocked out – either by electric shock or “mechanical destruction” of the brain – before boiling them, according to Swiss public broadcaster RTS.
The announcement reignited a long-running debate: Can lobsters even feel pain?
(Excerpt) Read more at bangordailynews.com ...
Pinchy would have wanted it this way!
They chopped up a live lobster on the Today show one morning before putting it in boiling oil or such. The parts were wriggling away as they were dropped in. The lady covering the segment almost fainted as the chef performed the operation. You could hear gasping off-screen the whole. The chef looked a little puzzled at first, then tried very hard to be non-chalant. But you could see an ever-so-small curl to his lips as he kept his head down and went on with his meal prep. Never panned away or cut to a commercial.
Back when live TV could still offer the unexpected and be fun to watch.
Pretty sure they can feel blows to the body and will try to get away, but they have no sensitivity to temperature change.
I had to look it up.
Pinchy was a lobster and the main protagonist of the episode “Lisa Gets an “A””. He was Homer’s pet in the episode.
History
Homer found him at a grocery store and decided to take him home to fatten up to eat. But gradually he grew emotionally attached to the lobster and decided to keep him as a pet, even naming him “Pinchy.” He kept him in the fish tank, then an indoor wading pool. Marge wanted Homer to get rid of him by cooking him up, but Homer kept seeing Pinchy as a helpless “little guy” whereas through Marge’s eyes, Pinchy looked like a normal vicious lobster.
Homer eventually killed Pinchy by accident when giving him a hot bath (which managed to boil him), and ate him all by himself while grieving and sobbing over the loss because “Pinchy would’ve wanted it that way.”
On a sailing trip, we anchored at t a small island down in the Abacos where the little island couldn’t have been more than an acre, but its specialty was a Caribbean lobster bake.
As we came ashore, we could see a guy near a grill about five feet wide and three feet deep...grilling lobsters.
He would grab a spiny lobster, chop it in half with a two foot meat cleaver, brush it with butter, season, it and throw it on the grill.
One of the women with us is a bit of an animal rights person, and was horrified by the sight of all the lobster halves there on the grill...still kicking their legs!
You slap some good ol' Wisconsin butter on it...and man...
Lobsters can’t feel pain. They have no pre-frontal cortex, they don’t even really have a brain.
Yes, we boil live lobsters in Maine. If it bothers anyone, just think of all the starfish, clams, and small creatures you are saving from being eaten alive by a lobster.
Will they ban abortion of human babies too?
IIRC A Chicago restaurant, The Bakery, had one like that hanging on the wall?
Oddly, the best deal I ever got on lobster was in Western, Kansas and it was one I found over and over.
The Dillon’s Supermarket had a lobster tank. For whatever reason, they would eventually chop off their tails and put a pack of two for sale at $12. After a few days they would reduce the price to $6 which was only $3 for each nice sized lobster tail.
I was not much of a cook but lobster tails were easy. I would split them down the middle and put a couple of pats of butter in the crease and put them in the microwave. Just as soon as they turned from sort of translucent color to white, meant they were done.
Put a little bit of lemon juice on them and it was great.
Don’t confuse withdrawing from noxious stimuli with feeling pain. An insect will show no signs of distress if a body part is damaged. A person who is knocked out still can pull away from pain but has no sense of pain or awareness. An insect or any invertebrate is most likely non aware that it is alive, it is an organism that just reacts.
Of course they feel pain. All animals do or they couldn’t survive.
The question here is only which method kills them the quickest.
The ones described are all about equal in speed if applied properly.
But they aren’t equal in application. Boiling would be the most certain. No slip ups.
Good Observation. Lobsters they care about their pain and deaths. Human babies...well, you know where they stand on that.
Good point!
Before the American Revolution, Boston dockworkers went on strike, protesting having to eat lobster more than three times a week. Talk about oppression of the working class! Servants specified in employment agreements that they would not have to eat lobster more than twice per week, the poor devils.
https://bangordailynews.com/2009/07/31/living/lobster-history-you-may-not-know/
A person who is knocked out still can pull away from pain but has no sense of pain or awareness.
Baloney.
Underwater, no one can hear the screams of the starfish, the profanity of the clams cut short leaving behind only horrible, watery silence....
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