Boiling live lobster: how are people legally allowed to do this?

rocklobster wrote:

They don't scrabble around after their wine bath.... plus they taste better.

I don't scrabble around very much after my wine bathes either.

lobsta in westport point, ma wrote:

Thanks for reminding me to get a couple of 2 pounders from Mike at the Point tomorrow. I'll be sure to immerse them head first in the boiling water.

All you tree huggers are idiots when it comes to food. Think about it: "oh, lord, I can't kill that head of broccoli because it's brother is right next to it, and it will die a terrible death because I cut it off at the base of it's stalk!"

Who the hell taught you this stuff???

We are talking about sentient beings. Lobsters. They are not a vegetable.

I am not a tree hugger, believe me. I eat meat and I am very conscious about the way it is farmed, killed, etc. It doesn't meant that will not a eat a hamburger from McDonalds now and again, but I do feel a bit of guilt for how the animal was likely raised and killed. Please, though, answer me this:

What makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? Is your refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that you don’t want to think about it? Do you ever think about your reluctance to think about it?

I am curious in a very sincere way. I am not saying that I never eat lobster, but I do think about this.

lobsta in westport point, ma wrote:

Thanks for reminding me to get a couple of 2 pounders from Mike at the Point tomorrow. I'll be sure to immerse them head first in the boiling water.

All you tree huggers are idiots when it comes to food. Think about it: "oh, lord, I can't kill that head of broccoli because it's brother is right next to it, and it will die a terrible death because I cut it off at the base of it's stalk!"

Who the hell taught you this stuff???

Haven't you learned anything? Head first does not matter. They do not have a centralized brain. Did you fail biology?

A website made of GOLD wrote:

I'm glad you asked.

There happen to be two main criteria that most ethicists agree on for determining whether a living creature has the capacity to suffer and so has genuine interests that it may or may not be our moral duty to consider.

One is how much of the neurological hardware required for pain-experience the animal comes equipped with—nociceptors, prostaglandins, neuronal opioid receptors, etc.

The other criterion is whether the animal demonstrates behavior associated with pain. And it takes a lot of intellectual gymnastics and behaviorist hairsplitting not to see struggling, thrashing, and lid-clattering as just such pain-behavior.

Have you ever boiled a live lobster? Struggling? Thrashing? Lid clattering? None of that occurs. They react when I pick them up, it doesn't matter where I bring them. When I gently place them in a pot that they fit in, they do nothing. They might move a little, but nothing like you describe.

I am not saying they do not feel pain, I am not saying that boiling them is ethical. What I am saying is that people like you bring up false statements using words like "thrashing" and "struggling" to make your point. Instead of making false truths just be honest. You don't think it's ethical, okay.

Now I've boiled literally hundreds of lobsters in the 30+ years I've lived in Maine, so please spare me any Wikipedia or other biased articles telling me about how much they "struggle to survive" when boiled.

And I hope all of you people show the same disgust when your children stomp on spiders and ants for no good reason. They are the same as a lobster, and most of us don't even eat them.

theMainepoint wrote:

And I hope all of you people show the same disgust when your children stomp on spiders and ants for no good reason. They are the same as a lobster, and most of us don't even eat them.

Interesting that you should say this. Because actually I do teach my children not to "stomp on spiders and ants for no good reason" and indeed not to be intentionally cruel to any living thing.

I also greatly enjoy lobster.

Glover Parker wrote:

...Please, though, answer me this:

What makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? Is your refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that you don’t want to think about it? Do you ever think about your reluctance to think about it?...

I am quite reluctant to think about my reluctance to think about it.

I'm surprised nobody has mentioned about crabs. Isn't boiling/steaming crabs the same thing for lobsters? Or some people think lobsters are more precious in terms of life value than crabs?

Speciesism

Hats too bee shed wrote:

And I hope all of you people show the same disgust when your children stomp on spiders and ants for no good reason. They are the same as a lobster, and most of us don't even eat them.

Interesting that you should say this. Because actually I do teach my children not to "stomp on spiders and ants for no good reason" and indeed not to be intentionally cruel to any living thing.

I also greatly enjoy lobster.[/quote]

That's what I said "I hope..."

Thank you for contributing nothing.

theMainepoint wrote:

Hats too bee shed wrote:

And I hope all of you people show the same disgust when your children stomp on spiders and ants for no good reason. They are the same as a lobster, and most of us don't even eat them.

Interesting that you should say this. Because actually I do teach my children not to "stomp on spiders and ants for no good reason" and indeed not to be intentionally cruel to any living thing.

I also greatly enjoy lobster.

That's what I said "I hope..."

Thank you for contributing nothing.[/quote]

Well, I suppose it is better to contribute nothing than to BE nothing.

I am truly sorry that you are so much of a nothing that you felt compelled to defend a position that was not attacked.

Thank you for being nothing. But next time try to be just a little bit more.

Yatha Sidrha wrote:

.Still trying to get through his 'Infinite Jest' though.

http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster

Persist, it's totally worth it. I actually just read Consider the Lobster this week, it's good, but fiction is really where he shines.

For those arguing boiling lobster is immoral do you want people to stop eating lobster entirely or do you prefer a different method of killing / cooking?

You will have a tough time convincing a lobster lover to stop. If they want to eat lobster then they will eat lobster. So far, I have not really heard the lobster protectors suggest a more humane method.

How do you know they are sentient? How do you define sentient? If you define it broadly enough to include lobsters then you must also include robots. I can make a robot which "seeks" out light to charge itself and which reacts to the environment around it to avoid objects which could harm it. Also this robot could "prefer" to be in groups of its own kind. Is this robot sentient?Ecoli can follow food gradients to locate more food. They can avoid harmful chemicals and react to various stressors. Are they sentient?