- cross-posted to:
- vegan@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- vegan@lemmy.world
Boiling lobsters while they are alive and conscious will be banned as part of a government strategy to improve animal welfare in England.
Government ministers say that “live boiling is not an acceptable killing method” for crustaceans and alternative guidance will be published.
The practice is already illegal in Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand. Animal welfare charities say that stunning lobsters with an electric gun or chilling them in cold air or ice before boiling them is more humane.
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Honestly that seems pretty reasonable. Boiling things alive is pretty barbaric.
I feel like chilling them is even worse. They usually live in cold waters, and chilling them in cold air (like a fridge) will just mostly make them suffocate for a while before you boil them alive. They can live a long time out of the water in a cold environment/on ice (think 24 to 48 hours long, not 2 or 3) because it just slows down their biological processes since they’re cold blooded. They’re just going to warm up again as they’re boiling, and it will probably take longer to start boiling as they have to come back up from a lower temperature.
Even the shock method seems kinda useless. It would need to knock them out for about 20 minutes to ensure that they’re unconscious until they’re dead.
The most humane thing to do would be to kill them somehow in one moment, like with a concussive force or stabbing through the brain stem, but that then runs into the issue of how quickly dead lobsters go bad (also the issue of presentation - people don’t want a crushed lobster staring at them from their plate). It’s actually illegal in plenty of places to sell dead lobsters (or even cook them!) due to this, so they would have to be killed on site just before being cooked, which is a tall order when 1lb of lobster meat requires about 5lbs of lobster to make (roughly about a 20% yield on lobsters) and it takes about 5 years for a lobster to reach 1lb in size (and then about 2 years for every pound after that).
All of this said, it’s all still probably more humane than that one company I used to work with back when I was in this kind of industry that was experimenting with getting raw lobster meat out of lobsters by tossing them into a pressure vessel.
Yeah, I don’t really have enough knowledge to offer a solution beyond “if we can’t kill them in a humane way, maybe we just don’t need to eat lobster.”
The most humane thing to do would be to kill them somehow in one moment…
This is a thing.
https://easycleancook.com/how-to-kill-a-lobster-before-you-cook-it/
- The Rapid Destruction of the Central Nervous System
One of the most humane methods of killing a lobster is referred to as the “stabbing method.” This technique involves quickly severing the lobster’s central nervous system, ensuring a fast and painless death.
Procedure (tigger warning/NSFW?)
Prepare the Lobster: Place the lobster on its back on the cutting board. Hold it firmly but gently to stabilize it.
Identify the Right Spot: Locate the cross section of the lobster’s carapace (the hard shell) right behind the eyes. This spot contains nerve ganglia that, when severed, will cause a rapid death.
Make the Cut: Using a sharp chef’s knife, make a swift incision right at the identified spot. Aim for a clean, quick cut to ensure that the nervous system is disrupted immediately.
Confirm the Kill: After cutting, the lobster should not exhibit movement. If it does, wait for a few moments to ensure that the process has been effective.
Basically yeah, as you say, cut its brain stem.
There are chefs who know exactly how to do this, it just requires skill and precision.
This ia arguably the proper way to prepare and serve lobster, as, when done correctly… well, beyond being the most humane method, it also produces the most flavorful dish.
Agreed, and I vaguely remembered something along these lines from my time cooking them, but I also know how many that I was cooking in a day as just a small scale operation at a local fish market cooking and shucking for lobster meat and cooking for the occasional customer to take home with them (I think the most we did in a day was close to one metric ton), and how unfeasible it is to do on a large scale.
I was doing 50 lbs at a time per pot, with 2 large stovetop pots at a time. That’s 25+ lobsters per pot, averaging probably about 60 lobsters per hour that I was cooking by myself. Imagining trying to do that at an industrial scale sounds like the kind of thing that would effectively kill lobster meat as anything other than an expensive specialty item.
And although maybe it should kill mass market lobster meat (why in the hell does McDonald’s sell lobster rolls in the first place???), I also have a visceral gut reaction to the idea of effectively making a food the exclusive domain of the rich. Especially when my boss at that job would make a big stink about people buying fish with Social Security money like poor people don’t deserve to eat anything other than rice and beans.
Well dang, I appreciate the insight from someone who’s actually done it!
But uh… yeah… it really just does seem to be the case that America is run by people who hate poor people, who also become (at least in their own minds) not poor, by creating poor people, who run business models that encourage people to become poor.
Its like a tautological loop of ‘I’m scamming you and that makes me better than you’ as an ethos.
The pathological malignant narcissist society.
time to ban Halal slaughter now too!
https://www.rspca.org.uk/adviceandwelfare/farm/slaughter/religiousslaughter
I mean… its not really banning Halal slaughter.
Its adding a step to it.
Around 88% of animals slaughtered in the UK for Halal are stunned first. All animals slaughtered under the Shechita (for Kosher) are non-stunned.
Just gotta get that 88% up higher toward 100%, of stunning them (ie, obliterating their frontal lobe, I think?)… and also put that step into play for Kosher slaughter as well.
boiled potatoes are barbaric, agree. roasting and frying is the way to go
dumb
Will always be funny to me that lobsters are such an expensive delicacy at fine dining restaurants when they started out as food for extremely poor people in coastal communities. In the old days the general public viewed eating them as you would view eating a rat today.
Oysters have made the switch between poor people food and rich people food quite a few times. Tuna has made the switch in my lifetime. It probably has something to do with how easy they are to harvest/catch when plentiful versus the results of overfishing, and how delicate the food is in the supply chain.
Bacon also, it used to be cheap as fuck. Same with chicken wings. Two of the cheapest parts of the animal, now magically nearly the most expensive.
Its both here, cooking bacon is the cheapest boneless meat I have ever seen per weight. But you can also get pretty fancy expensive bacon choices too.
Pork chops are cheaper than bacon.
They aren’t here. At least not the cheapest bacon.
what are you talking about. bacon and chicken wings are cheap. almost every other desirable cut of pig/chicken is more expensive. chicken wings are often 1-2 dollars a lb.
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where i live chicken breasts are 8 dollars a lb. bacon is like 5 bucks for really nice stuff. chicken wings are 2 bucks. thighs are 6 dollars. pork tenderloin is 9.
Where are you getting wings that cheap? They’re usually like $3-4 a lb in the south and bacon is usually $6+ a lb…only if you grab it in bulk does bacon go down to like $3.50ish and you’re buying the rejection stuff that doesn’t look pretty but still tastes fine.
the grocery store.
There’s a theory that carbonara used to be a “war time” food.
Give the tech bros long enough and rat will be a delicacy for the rest of us aswell
While they were called ‘sea rats’,they werent considered quiteas bad as rats- it was common for servant’s contracts to limit the number of meals lobster could be served to them for, usually 1 or 2 a week, not the hard 0 that serving rat would have been.
Lobster is only ok. I don’t think I’ve ever had anything with lobster in it that wasn’t independently good, or improved in any meaningful way with lobster.
That said, when lobster was viewed the way you’re describing, it was seen as more of a pest. There was so much lobster freely available, it was literally piling up on beaches. No one was fishing for lobsters, they were just scooping them up and then making a rather revolting stew with them. That was being served to prisoners as a form of penance, meant to be bland and unstimulating. Sandy guts and all.
There are several types of lobsters. US Red lobster has nothing to do with the big blue ones they have here in fancy restaurants.
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Uh, does anyone in this thread even know how to kill a lobster?
I feel like this is barely a problem, you usually slice into its head and then immediately boil to avoid any chance of rapid bacteria breakdown. I dont even know if theres any other practical method aside from boiling without slicing into the head.
Also not to be that guy, but is this really such a massive concern that the government needs to focus on right now? Seems like they are more concerned about handling lobsters than their own citizens after they labeled Palestine Action a terrorist group and had anyone supporting them arrested and charged as such.
Maybe the citizens have been asking for them to deal with lobbyists and they just misheard
You can have more than one law being established at once.
There has been systematic reduction in the humanities/philosophy, arts, literature etc. In countries. The affect it has is a society focused on work and compliance with status quo. (The USA is actively destroying their own system purposly)
A law ending cruelty should be celebrated as a glimmer of hope that we as a society are still capably of thinking at a higher level, that we are still questioning life, and meanings around it. If we cease to do those things we will be a dead automata society that lives only to work.
Killed a lobster? I’ve never even tasted one. Sounds like a rich people problem.
Lobsters used to be poor people’s food. The taste is really just giant shrimp.
1800s new England, they were refered to as sea rats, and it was a common clause in servants contracts limiting how many meals a week they could be given lobster.
Honestly not missing much. I don’t get all the fuss, plenty of other seafood that imo tastes loads better.
Also not to be that guy, but is this really such a massive concern that the government needs to focus on right now?
Labour is flailing. They came into office with an enormous popular mandate to undo the corrupt and abusive practices of the Conservative government, then proceeded to extend and cement these same unpopular policies while engaging in all the same corrupt practices - in many cases taking money and gifts from the exact same people.
This is what they’ve got. Haphazardly pandering to any special interest group that won’t step on the toes of a mega-donor or trip over graft being committed by another influential MP.
Seems like they are more concerned about handling lobsters than their own citizens after they labeled Palestine Action a terrorist group and had anyone supporting them arrested and charged as such.
AIPAC fully has its hooks into the Labour government, especially at the leadership level. In many ways, the sanction on boiled lobster and the sanction on Palestine Rights activists is coming from the same place. A need to crank up policing on everyone everywhere for anything that can justify a government sanction.
The UK police state is metasticizing again.
Most people don’t cook lobster and those that do cook it once a year.
No, they don’t know how to kill a lobster. They buy it at the store, it sits in the fridge for half a day or two an they toss in in boiling water.
I feel like most people who actually cook live lobsters know what they are doing. Who else buys a live lobster?
Anyone with a few bucks and a grocery store nearby that carries them? I am happy to say that this is pretty rare. As a kid in the 90’s it felt like every grocery store had live lobsters for sale.
My middle school home economics teacher told us the story of her cooking lobster for the first time. She thought they killed them for you when you get them at the grocery store.
She got home and opened the bag to find two live lobsters. The only pot she had big enough was glass. She watched those two lobsters boil to death and never had lobster again.
Lobsters have a decentralized nervous system, so stabbing it in the head doesn’t really do anything. It’s pretty much just something chefs started doing to appear to know more than the home cook. There’s no scientific reason for stabbing them first.
So then not only are you still boiling them alive, but you are also causing a lot of pain by unnecessarily stabbing their face off?
This is why the correct method is splitting, where you cut the head in half down the middle and partway into the main body. Cutting the head off still leaves a significant chuck of the “brain” alive and unwell.
So, how WOULD you kill it without pain?
Give them a shot of morphine first
Lol I could see this becoming a delicacy- lobster that gets you high when you eat it
Ikr. They stopped the lobsters from being slowly boiled alive but not their own citizens lol
Worked at Red Lobster back in the 90s. The cook would just flip it over, split it down the middle and gut it. 5 seconds, it’s dead as a rock.
Yeah they also do things like that with other animals also, the point of the legislation is we have science showing animals (and fish also after bad science before) feel pain. And we are far enough in history where we can be a kinder species.
Two ways to dispatch a lobster.
One is to put the knife behind the eyes, stab down and chop towards the front of the lobster, bifurcating the head.
The other is to put the lobster in the freezer for 30-45 minutes. This slows its metabolism to the point of practical death, so it doesnt feel anything when you put it in the boiling water.
second option is less…actively choppy, so i imagine most squeemish people would prefer that option.
oof i’d take the head chop over being rapidly frozen and then boiled, thanks
Cause you’re not cold blooded, or a lobster. So you don’t have the same response to it that they do.
Valid point but you cant prove that im not either of those things
i can’t prove you’re not coffee either
they also got that lobster gun that does the choppy for you if you’re doing it in bulk or are squeamish
It’s about as massive a thing as plastic straws and that annyoing little tab in all caps now.
With this administration’s track record, I’m half expecting this to turn out to be the justification for putting “lobster-verification” cameras in everyone’s kitchen.
“A bobby at every table and a camera in every pot.”
- Liz Truss or something, idk UK politics
It’s just silly that this is still a thing in almost 2026. It’s so obvious even Hitler banned it, and he was no animal rights activist.
He actually was, despite his horrific treatment of human beings.
More formally, on May 15, 1942, the Nazis issued an order instructing all Jews to bring all of their pets to collection points where they would be euthanized.
Of course if animals were in the care of the “wrong” human beings then they had to be killed. Fascist ideology has always, and will always, be an incoherent mess of contradictions in service of bigotry.
Well, I’ll be damned.
I’ll need to read up on this.
Hitler was a maniac and a despicable person, but I seem to remember reading that he was vegetarian and at least liked dogs. Maybe he was an animal rights activist, provided that you didn’t consider humans animals.
Please stop using "even Hitler … " It just doesn’t work.
Culinary school recommended a quick kitchen knife through the brain immediately before boiling
Is the recommendation the same for other crustaceans?
Instead of boiling them alive, yes.
Lobsters are the one you are going to see alive most, though, as their meat breaks down very quickly after they die. That isn’t true of most other crustaceans, at least not to the same degree
I’ve seen crabs boiled alive, and shellfish like clams and oysters are steamed alive.
With the crabs you can snip them between the eyes for a quick death but I’m not sure what to do for a clam
I could be wrong, but I don’t believe that crabs flesh contains the enzymes that break it down the way lobsters do. I do believe you can buy fresh, dead crab at some markets.
But you should definitely kill any living ones before boiling
proof that their flesh is only held together by their immense psychic powers :)
While they are alive and conscious.
That’s why I fill my lobsters with propofol before cooking them. People always say my dinner parties are a snooze. I don’t know why, I always have a good time. Of course, I don’t eat lobster.
This doesn’t kill the crab
From what I’ve been told lobsters will release a toxin if not killed properly. Boiling alive is/was the easiest way to do it and thus widely adopted especially at consumer level.
Quickly in the sense that bacterial growth on them becomes toxic within a far shorter time than other things we eat. Bacteria isn’t growing in the 10 seconds it takes to kill them and then dump into the pot. Just don’t leave them laying around for a long time.
Nah, they don’t release a toxin, at least not in the sense of “self-defense” that is usually meant with that phrase. After death they rot very quickly, so they do become toxic, I guess that’s similar enough. My dad cooked lobsters often and he always stuck a paring knife in a very specific spot in the head right before boiling, I assume this information is about to become much more widespread to comply with these new laws.
Put them on ice to slow/sleep them, then slice through the center on the head with a sharp knife.
But their feelings!
I like this
After watching Seaspriacy on Netflix, I stopped eating seafood, with exception to dried seaweed.
what about fish?
Scratched fish off my list.
Coming from Halifax, I always gave them a quick knife through head before tossing them in the pot.
Some folks said that you can also kill them relatively humanely by sticking them in the freezer.
I would say freezing to death is not humane, slow and low (freezing) would suck way more than a quick off switch. Boiling them is just a dick move imo
Nigel Farage would know “authoritarian control freakery” when he sees it. I think it’s unsettling for him to see it coming from someone else.
The usual way of dispatching a lobster is a knife straight in the centre of the brain and cutting forward. Not sure why anyone would want a lobster to be alive when its actually cooked.
I thought lobsters don’t have a brain and instead have a decentralised nervous system?
Good change, as someone who’s vegan.
We’ll take what we can get
