http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060616/ap_on_...e/live_lobsters

I've always hated this practice . . . saw it happen, once . . . made me sick.

I saw it once too, Armanis, when some friends cooked lobster for dinner. It sickened me (but I was able to recover in time to eat the lobster). I feel real hypocritical on this. Once in Maine I couldn't stand to pick a lobster to be cooked for my meal but I had no trouble eating three pounds of fresh steamed clams, nor did I refuse one of the lobster claws from my SIL's lobster she had had the courage to order. (Sigh... the evolutionary tribulations of making the transformation from carniverous to vegetarian...)

Well, plants are alive, when they're yanked from the ground, to be harvested . . . but watching lobsters being boiled alive, was too much . . . in Florida one time, my father went crab fishing. He brought them home, and boiled them, alive. The crabs were jumping from the pot, crawling on the kitchen floor of our apartment . . . trying to escape. My sister and I were both, in tears . . . then of course, we had to EAT, the crabs. I don't think I've recovered from that encounter, yet . . .

I just bought a big enough stockpot that can probably hold two lobsters. Of course, if you want boiled lobster, you have to boil them. For lobster newburg (my favorite), or lobster armoricaine, I believe one need to plunge a knife through the head and then cut up the tail, or get the meat from the tail out. I've done the first (in a medium sized pot whose lid kept getting tapped) and haven't done the latter.

The Whole Foods news bothers me because what happens to the lobster before they are cooked and frozen? Are they going to grow lobster meat in a test tube somewhere?

That article doesn't make sense. Whole Foods will no linger sell live lobsters because it's inhumane to boil them alive BUT they will sell raw frozen & cooked lobster products. How do they think those lobsters died? Probably by being frozen alive and boiled.

I just can't eat any lobster that I've met, personally. Choosing one, watching it boiled, then eating it . . . is not my idea of an appetizing meal. Ari and Jackie used to select a pregnant lamb, have it slaughtered, then eat its unborn babies.

I'm glad I have no problem with my place at the top of the food chain.

Sandra . . . did you know that lobersters and shrimp, are related to centipedes? They do, look alike . . . segments, feelers, and ALL those legs . . .

Well really, lobsters are about as attractive as cockroaches. I just happened to taste lobster before I saw one or else it might have been a problem.

It does bother me to see them alive before I eat them and that's odd, because I'm not "sentimental" (bad word, but best I could do). so I just wouldn't cook them. I eat them out.

I've read conflicting articles about them suffering pain as they are plunged into boiling water. I think some people do something to them first to ease the pain - maybe give them scopalamine.

Well, this is exactly the problem with a lot of contemporary "ethics" about cruelty to animals--it really boils down to aesthetics. Nobody wants to see the sausage made, etc.

Actually, the process of boiling a lobster alive can be made a little more humane by first putting the lobster in the freezer for a few minutes. This puts them into a kind of torpor, and they don't react to the boiling water at all. They don't show any sign of suffering from the cold of the freezer--or, at least, that's the word from a lobster expert who was interviewed on NPR a while back. Or, you could just order the risotto...

Click to view attachmentBG, I will NEVER forget those crabs crawling out of that boiling water, running across the kitchen floor. It made me sick, to see my father stick them back inside the pot, slam down the cover, and hold it in place. I'll never forget that . . . especially since my sister and I had to EAT, our dinner, or else . . .

Armanis, your little bulimic smiley is making me sad! That's really a terrible story. I don't know how some adults can be so blind to the feelings of children.

BG, I could tell you stories about my father, that would make you blanch. Even my doctor couldn't believe them. You see this kid? I was four years old, in that photo . . . already CRUSHED, by my father's abuse.

for years I thought I was a lone voice in the wilderness and the town nutcase because I was always complaining at the supermarket that it seemed very cruel to rubber band their claws and crowd them into a small tank. Good for whole foods.

Personally, I don't like lobster...but I am happy for the poor critters.

Man: oh, the inhumanity!

Suz, wouldn't that be inlobsterity? (Sorry, couldn't resist that...)

LOL, Jo!!

What the hell, I might as well play devil's advocate, here:

When my husband went to M.I.T, he took courses in artificial intelligence, taught by professor Marvin Minsky.
Minsky studied lobsters, lobster BRAINS, to be exact, he paid particular attention to their neurons.
And he found that lobsters do not have enough neurons to be able to register, much less understand pain. They use their entire brain to move around and feed, and do not have enough left for anything less, not even registering pain.

http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/

So the outrage over live boiling of lobsters and the banning of such practice is a great way to appease HUMANS and our sense of compassion, that's all very honorable, but it won't do squat for lobsters: THEY don't care.

I remember when I was a kid, my mom bought fresh lobsters and I was so, so sad when they tried to escape. Of course they are experiencing pain, why on earth they are trying to escape! But I'm such a hypocrite because I will eat lobsters, not the whole lobster, just the tails. If boiling is painful, I could imagine having their bodies ripped apart! It's a vicious cycle we live in.

Have you studied lobsters, by any chance?

No, but I feel sorry for the little lads. It's silly to feel sorry for a creature that we love to eat. It's best not to know how they come to our table. That is all I have to say.

Actually... if we go by Minsky's finding, and assume that lobsters do not feel pain, I still think that banning the practice may not be such a bad idea: raising people's consciousness about their relationship with food is a good thing, because look at how the chickens in poultry farms are treated... it's appalling. They feel pain and panic, no doubt there.
So since everyone doesn't have the time and desire to not only learn about which edible creatures feel what, and which do not, and that there are far too many cases of animal abuse committed in the food industry, then perhaps banning all cruel treatment regardless of whether or not the animal fels pain, might be the right way to go.

... What a strong case for tofu!!! ;D

you know what..I don't care! I have pithed frogs, hooked worms, gutted fish. plucked birds...I eat meat, and I would rather eat a cow that I have known and loved than a neglected chicken. The trauma of a lobster just doesn't register so call me callous!

I still eat foie gras!

I was just at Whole Foods Market in Austin today!

Lissen, I know Austin, and buhlee me, they're just doing this for whatever bleeding-heart hippy-dippy-trippy crunchy-granola publicity they'll get by banning these.... it will have zilcho effect on lobstering in, say, Maine or Boston.

I am worried about global warming.... but the pain of these nasty ocean cockroaches? not sa much.

Never eat Lobster.
Who was the actor who went into a store and released all the lobsters from the tank?

All of these arguments against lobster-eating make sense, but I just can't get that excited about it -- we have lobsters only twice a year and yes, there are things I'd rather be doing than plunging them into a pot of boiling water head first, but all the same I can't get excited over it. Maybe it's because my rational mind doubts that they're feeling any pain.

I've never killed my own chicken, pig, or cow, or seen one killed, and I have a feeling that would be a different story. In that case, it's willfull ignorance on my part. Not so defensible.

When I was a kid, my parents had a friend who used to put the lobsters in COLD water and then turn the heat up! Now that's sadistic, even if the lobsters can't feel any pain.

So far, no one has alluded to that queer, unnerving, high-pitched sigh that lobsters wail when they hit the boiling water....



mwah-ha-ha-ha!!!!! (-;

They're ugly. And they're gross. And they're related, to centipedes. But I just cannot eat a lobster that I've met personally, and I will NEVER forget that crab trying to escape its fate, OR my father, slamming down that cover on the pot. Worst of all, was having to eat this inspired, crab dinner. No more Shrimp de Jonghe for me, either . . . feel now like I'm biting into a big, thick, juicy 'pede.

I prefer steaming lobsters to boiling them. The meat seems more tender. And then you don't get that side effect of the claws knocking on the side of the pot, either, although I'm with Sandra--I have no issue with boiling (or steaming) lobsters. More, please!

persey . . . you may not be as 'safe,' as you think . . .

Also you might want to remember that lobsters like crabs are bottom feeders. They eat all the crap that drops to the ocean floor. YUM.

Many members of my father's family were in the crabbing business.
Now...I've lived around farms, and have seen animals killed and cleaned...
I know people who hunt, and if they eat the meat...and only kill for the food, I don't really hold their hunting against them.
When people kill animals as a 'sport'...I dismiss them. Just like that.

I became a vegetarian for the first time, at the age of five...right after I had seen my mother kill a chicken.
We were sitting at the table eating that chicken...when it all hit me. I was eating something I had seen alive and thriving that morning...
I was eating a dead animal.
I was eating something I had seen killed...
I lasted seven years without eating meat, again...that time.

My father was laid-off from his job, when I was about fourteen. He was in his mid-fifties...and it was hard for him to find another job...and we did without a lot for several years. Times were a bit hard.
Money was very tight.
We went fishing and crabbing a lot ... and we put a lot of fish and crabs on our table and on our neighbors' tables.
I learned how to make just about every crab dish known to man...and soft-shell crabs, which are delicacies in most places, were things we ate several times a week...and I was the one who 'cleaned' them.
I've certainly boiled my share of crabs, too. Saw them trying to scrabble out of the pots, too...
Oddly, it never impacted me the way the chickens did...
Huh.

I don't think I could 'slow cook' a crab or shrimp or lobster or crawfish. It just seems like putting them into the cold water...slowly killing them...boiling them slowly is a much worse fate than dropping them straight into boiling water...
Gotta agree with Cathleen on that...

I'm just sitting here ruminating on how things affect us...

Yeah...I don't eat veal...or goose liver pate...or pieces of raw fish meat cut off live fish...because of my thoughts on how those meats are obtained...
Yet...I eat crabs and sometimes shrimp and crawfish...and that probably makes a lot of veal and foie gras eaters cringe...

Huh.

did anyone read Life a la Henri? There is a chapter-long discussion over the shock of boiling water vs. the slow kill of the evolution to boil method. Henri argues for the slow death and tender texture from the slow death.

No, I haven't read that . . . but in some parts of the world, live dogs are slowly rotisseried, in order that their meat, be tender and juicy. At this point in my existence, I'd love just to swallow a pill, and forget about eating food, altogether. Except perhaps, for chocolate and fruit.

I've often wished there were tasty, satisfying little compressed food pills or squares one could munch that would have all the needed nutrients and could be eaten with no further thought to preparing meals. Of course the familial and social aspects of dining would have to be rechanneled to some other activities but I wouldn't mind eating this way most of the time, with only occasional dining on special occasions. (Ducking from gourmet-thrown tomatoes and other worse items...)

I feel the same way, Donna . . . ESPECIALLY, if you're vigilant about watching your weight . . . consuming food, gets to be a difficult, lack luster affair.

Aw, hell. They're made of meat. They're meant to be eaten. As long as they're tasty, I'm eatin'. :-)

That reminds me of the passage in Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses, where she describes the proper procedure for roasting a goose alive. Yes, that's right. Alive. And slowly. It's one of the most horrible things I've ever read in my life. I was a vegetarian for a long time, and I've made my peace with killing for food, but inflicting that kind of suffering for my own pleasure--that's the depths of debauchery, if you ask me.

I think it's interesting that others share my "eating as an optional activity" fantasy. You know, I was severely anorexic for years, and I still struggle in some ways with being phobic about food--so I've always thought of that fantasy as fundamentally neurotic. If so, I guess at least I'm in good company ;-)

BG, did you know that Ari and Jackie used to feast on UNBORN, lamb? Ecch.

I'll tell you . . . if you watch your weight, it's not that much fun, to eat. If I want to stay this size, so that I can fit into my clothes, and not buy three different wardrobes . . . I canNOT eat, very much. That's the truth. And this is WITH, exercise. Mind you, until I turned 35 I could eat an entire cheesecake and wake up thinner, the next morning . . . so I do have plenty of good 'food' memories. But, not now.

I would love just to have a pill, especially for lunch and again, at dinner. Done, do other things . . . forget about it. About the only thing I really enjoy anymore, is dessert. My sister feels just the same, way.