Posted on 02/08/2007 10:56:12 AM PST by LJTailor1
Whole Foods, the Austin, Texas-based natural foods grocery chain, decided to take a stand against the unethical and painful treatment of crustaceans. Last June the chain said they would no longer sell live lobsters and crabs.The Whole Foods ban would apply even to the crustacean capital of North America: The State of Maine.
But today they rolled back that rule with some stipulations.
Whole Foods decided to sell lobsters at its Portland, Maine store after finding a company that met its demands for how the lobsters should be treated.
The lobsters will be kept in private compartments instead of being piled on top of each other in a tank, and workers will use a kind of stun gun device that zaps them with a 110-volt electric shock to spare them the agony of being boiled alive in a pot of water.
Oh, the agony!
Whole Foods standards for lobsters are similar to those it uses in buying its meat, poultry and other animal products, said David Lannon, regional president for the North Atlantic region.
(Excerpt) Read more at johnib.wordpress.com ...
how re-VOLTing.............. ;)
Kill it and grill it.....I don't care how you kill it......
We had a 5+lb lobster at Christmas (cooked at home). The market said that another lady had ordered 12 small lobsters for her Christmas celebration, but ours ATE two of them in the tank! (with claws banded.)
Heh-heh. It tasted even that much better.
If they've found a way to sell lobsters more humanely in Maine, why can't they do it everywhere else?
I'm so glad that someone cares for Lobsters....pass the tartar sauce please....
The proper way to cook a Lobster is to steam it. Anywho, in all the years I've been eating Lobsters I never found a nerve in one. Maybe that's because they have no cerebral cortex.
The ghosts of 70 billion humans from the past 4 million years...are laughing their spirit butts off right about now...
If they're dead when you buy 'em better get them home and cook the right away.
What's wrong with giving a lobster the knife before placing it in the pot, like professional chefs do? Does Whole Foods think their employees don't know how? Why can't they learn?
We want to be electrocuted too!
I don't have a problem with a more humane way of killing them. The boiled alive part is something that always bothered me. I find it very hard to believe that the lobster cannot feel any pain.
You have to try a grilled lobster!!!!!!!!
You've clearly never been to Maine.
Whole Foods is against selling live lobsters because the traditional way to cook (kill) them is to put them in a pot of boiling hot water. Essentially, they are boiled alive.
Has anyone ever told Whole Foods that sea lions (nature) kills live lobsters by eating them alive?
I suppose when preparing these beasts at home one could put them in the sink full of water and chuck the toaster in, plugged in of course. Now to get around those pesky GFIs. An element of risk, for sure, but when compared to the cute as the dickens lobster's fate a few human causalities will be acceptable.
Most people up here in New England eat lobster with melted butter. I don't think I've ever seen anybody eat it with tartar sauce. Doesn't really work well, IMHO.
I have seen them crawling along the ocean floor missing parts and still behaving like any lobster. Big tropical fish can be seen minus their tails (probably due to the lobsters), still swimming in a lurching manner. While I suppose the crippled ones get eaten sooner by other predators, they don't writhe in agony.
As someone said earlier in the thread: I have yet to find any nervous tissue in lobsters, shrimp, prawns or crab. They are not human or even mammalian. They are simply tasty aquatic bugs.
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