Posted on 06/13/2006 7:18:16 AM PDT by Cat loving Texan
No wonder people think this town is goofy. The Whole Foods Market chain headquartered here in Austin is thinking about stopping the sale of live lobsters because it could be cruel to the lobsters.
"We're reviewing the entire process literally from boat to plate to see if we can make some significant improvement in that whole supply process," Whole Foods spokeswoman Kate Lowery said.
One way Whole Foods could make some significant improvement would be to release all the lobsters into Town Lake. That way I could collect them and eat them.
Still, on Thursday the Whole Foods leadership will discuss whether to discontinue marketing live lobsters because the lobsters may not be getting humane treatment. At issue here is what people do with the lobsters when they take them home that is, boil them and dip them in drawn butter. "It's ultimately how they're handled by the consumer after they go home that's a concern," Lowery said.
What are we supposed to do? Give them names like Larry the Lobster and take them for a walk?
Then there's the problem of the lobster's in-store living conditions. Whole Foods would like the lobsters to have an environment similar to their natural habitat.
"They like dark areas, and they like solitary," Lowery said. "You can imagine how they would go and kind of burrow into rocks, creating their own space." I think I went drinking once in a place like that in the Warehouse District.
Lowery added that at some point Whole Foods will also address the ticklish issue of selling live clams.
Are you concerned about clams' feelings? Have you ever had a conversation with a clam? Wait. Let me rephrase that. Have you ever had a conversation with a clam when you weren't on acid?
If the answer is yes, get a job at Whole Foods.
Another concern is the way children bother the lobsters by tapping on the lobster tank glass. I don't care about that. But I wish science could figure a way to put children on mute and vibrate, like with a cell phone. Now there's a concept that would sell.
Anyway, I went over to the Whole Foods store to see if the live lobsters are getting a bum deal in the seafood section. Actually, the lobsters are getting off easy. They're still kickin'. It's the tilapia and salmon that are getting screwed. The tilapia have been hacked to pieces, and the wild salmon have been mushed up with spinach and feta cheese and turned into burgers.
Ain't a vet in town could bring these salmon back. And you're telling me the lobsters have a bum deal?
One of the problems, said the guy working at the Whole Foods fish counter, is that they can't feed the lobsters in the tank. "When you eat, you then poop, and this creates a dirty tank," he said. Yeah, I've noticed that connection. Maybe Whole Foods could hand the lobsters some bum wad.
Another problem, the seafood counter guy said, is the way lobsters are transported to the store. "They're put in a box and wrapped tightly with wet newspaper over the lobster," he said.
So Whole Foods could pick up the lobster in a limo. At the prices they charge, they could afford it.
John Kelso's column appears on Sundays, Tuesdays and Fridays. Contact him at 445-3606 or jkelso@statesman.com.
When we had a hundred or so to cook at Catalina, when the pots were full we put them on the floor and had lobster races while they were waiting for their turn!
Just curl their tail up and stick their heads in the water and it only takes about 3 seconds before they lose their kick.
I asked the seafood clerk at the market where we buy our lobsters "how do you clean the tank?"
She replied: we don't. THEY (indicating the lobsters) do.
(Mmmm... bottom feeders!)
Well, what do you think is in that luscious, sought-after green tomalley, anyway?
How can something so ugly taste so good? Makes me want to try eating tarantulas.
I'm going crabbing tomorrow - the lobsters are too far offshore and I don't feel like getting in a boat.........
Mmmm, I'm smelling the butter and the fire from Caribbean grilled lobsters now - mops and mops of butter over split lobsters. Oh, my.
Well, OK - begging to know if there is a different "secret" from the way I do it. If you take hold of the little pincer and kind of rock it back and forth, it will loosen the cartilage thingy that goes down inside there and the meat comes right out, whole. I make lobster salads and have to do it that way. It's just like big crabs, except a litle harder to pull. Is there another way?
When one of my nieces was really little, like 2-3, we went to the fishmonger's and I was asking her what she wanted to have for dinner. I knew she liked Alaskan King crab legs, so pointed those out.
She kept saying "potters, potters." I was just going along, yeah, uh-huh. "Potters, that's right." LOL. I thought she was saying "butters" or something.
Turns out I later learned she was saying "spiders, spiders." But she did like them and did eat them. Not Miss Muffett, for sure.
Somehow poetic to all of the lefties from Maine.
They do have brains actually, I think the marketing folks at The Lobster Institute are streching the truth so more people won't feel guilty about eating our yummy little friends. They are small and primative, but they are a "brain". Food tastes better when you know that it suffered.
Heading down a slippery slope here. Next thing would be to ban antibiotics because some study proved that bacteria feel pain.
I used to dive for them. They can swim away PDQ. In three seconds, they're so far away, it's not worth the air to swim
after them, hoping they'd set down.
And they really know how to wedge themselves in crevices.
They dug a hole in his backyard to create a steam pit. Nothing went right, but it turned out okay.
Somebody bought a book after the fact on how to do it, and you're supposed to kill the lobbies before you put them on
the seaweed to be slowly steamed.
No, lobsters do not feel pain. Their central ganglion is rudimentary at best. I spent 2 years studying lobster neural anatomy at Woods Hole, and wrote an even half-dozen peer-reviewed papers on the subject.
And then I became a lobsterman!
Look, the water in those tanks is refrigerated. The cold water and confined space slows the lobsters' metabolism. As it is, they very comfortably can go months without eating.
Plus, poop-free lobster tastes better!
Your 4- pounders probably came from Area 3- offshore from the Canadian Border to North Carolina. Mass and Maine have the infrastructure to ship to the US west. Nova Scotia's Select (1.5 lb+) lobsters tend to go to Europe Via Boston.
Again, no, they don't have a brain. The central ganglion has a bulb behind the lobster's eyes that principally houses the nerve bundles that handle vision. The processes that make up this section of the central ganglion account for 60% of the weight of the central ganglion. In other words, what gets mistaken for a 'brain" is the optic nerves! Incidentally, there are no receptors that can handle much beyond vision cues. I know. I looked for them. For 2 years.
Also, the Lobster Institute is made up of scientists, not marketing people or lobstermen.
Incientally, please don't call 'em 'lobbies'. Sounds kinda, uh, suspect... the proper slang term for insiders is "Bugs."
I stand corrected, my original statement was based on knowledge collected from a biology class 15 years ago. I just did some googling and learned about how autonomous the ganglion are in lobsters. What surprises me is that there is a lot of literature and diagrams on the net that still refer to the central ganglion as a brain. The anatomists, biologists and zoologists need to get together and get the definitions straight on what a brain really is.
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