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.
LET’S GOOO
Just leave these animals to live their lives however they seem fit. Without unnecessary human interference. As we do have that option.
I like this
Culinary school recommended a quick kitchen knife through the brain immediately before boiling
Good. This may seem like a joke now but slowly over decades people will stop doing this.
it’ll be 80 years before this policy reaches Southeast Asia, where they are regularly cutting live frogs in half below the torso with scissors in the markets, tossing all the dying frog torsos together in a big pile. maybe 180 years actually
Why do they cut them that way in particular?
I think it’s just the legs that are eaten? Not sure though.
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
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.
UK government caring more about lobster welfare than that of trans people.
Maybe time to start identifying as a lobster…
I don’t think you’re allowed to boil trans people alive either
You certainly shouldn’t be eating them
I mean you can *eat *them if you know what I mean
The bad thing is that these goals do not conflict with each other: they could easily do both if they wanted to.
The amount of people that are in knots trying to defend a barbaric practice is quite telling.
Chopping down plants & eating them is also barbaric.
Isn’t it time you checked in on Carol?
Do plants feel pain the way a lobster would? I genuinely don’t know.
I do know that making an animal suffer rather than giving it a quick death is wrong.
Do plants feel pain?
From what I’ve read so far, unfortunately, it seems like they might. Plants can communicate with each other and form underground resource networks with other plants, fungi, and microorganisms. Including for illness, boring bugs and pain responses. The smell of fresh cut grass is one of those warning/pain responses.
I’ve wanted to do some bonsai succulents, but the process towards any living thing seems cruel and painful.
You only quoted part of their question. Yes, plants react to pain, but that doesn’t mean they feel pain the same way a lobster does.
Now this I can agree with.
Yes agreed so lets just starve then, only proper thing to do
Just learn to photosynthesize like that guy obviously does
Nah, you starve. You’re the one who’s into that stuff.
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.
Please stop using "even Hitler … " It just doesn’t work.
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.
even Hitler banned it
That’s kinda interesting.
What reasoning did that govt. have?
It frightens me that we can’t 100% agree that boiling a living thing that feels pain, is bad.
Humans are the worst.
Most killing involves pain, all meat requires killing.
And it should be instant. Not like the extreme polar end of those asian guys skinning a dog while it was still alive for the meat market.
✂️ this kills the crab
all meat requires killing.
Technically not true… You could amputate and eat part of an animal without killing it
So like harvesting claws from stone crabs?
A TV reporter became lost on the back roads and stopped at a farm to get directions. As he was talking to the farmer he noticed a pig with a wooden leg. “This could be a great story for the Six O’Clock News. How did that pig lose his leg?” he asked the farmer. “Well”, said the farmer, “that’s a very special pig. One night not too long ago we had a fire start in the barn, and that pig squealed so loud and long that he woke everyone, and by the time we got there he had herded all the other animals out of the barn. Saved them all.”
“And that was when he hurt his leg?” asked the journalist anxious for a story. “Nope, he pulled through that just fine.” said the farmer. “Though a while later, I was back in the woods when a bear attacked me. Well, sir, that pig was nearby and he came running and rammed that bear from behind and then chased him off. He saved me for sure.”
“Wow! So the bear injured his leg then?” questioned the reporter. “No. He came away without a scratch. Though a few days later, my tractor turned over in a ditch and I was knocked unconscious. Well, that pig dove into the ditch and pulled me out before I got cut up in the machinery.” “Ahh! So his leg got caught under the tactor?” asked the journalist. “Noooo. We both walked away from that one.” says the farmer.
“So how did he get the wooden leg?” asked the journalist. “Well”, the farmer replied, “A pig that good you don’t eat all at once!"
How useful :p
Can you eat starfish?
Yes, you can.
all plant eating is killing too
Correct. Scientists have done studies on vibrations from plants and they have a reaction to being cut and pulled that could be equated to a “pain” response.
Let’s suppose that you actually genuinely care about reducing the amount of plant suffering in the world. If this is the case, surely you would be vegan, because 3/4 of our total agricultural land is used to grow plants to support animal agriculture. (Since grass feels pain just like soybeans do, this includes pasture land.) So far fewer plants would be killed if everyone was vegan.
Of course, you don’t actually live your life in a manner consistent with believing plants feel pain. I don’t think anyone would think twice about swerving into some flowers to avoid a dog in the street for fear of causing suffering to the flowers.
far fewer plants would be killed if everyone was vegan.
I doubt this
That’s ok, totally understandable. Just read the comment again
still not convinced
How so? Have you seen the energy pyramid diagram?
The one I am referring to is specifically figure 2
much of what animals eat are parts of plants people can’t or won’t eat. I don’t actually believe any fewer plants would be harmed if people were vegan.
Have you ever seen felines hunting? They are fucking psychos by your standards.
Judging ourselves by what animals do is a wild take. I guess we’ve just all broadly stopped caring about being human sometime around when “alpha males” became a serious topic of discussion in human behavior.
In case you didn’t know, we are animals.
We should always keep that in mind and stop pretending “being human” is some universal thing.
I’ve heard a lot of the world’s worst people use that as an excuse to do the most horrible things, and I despair that so many people readily embrace it as a validation.
We are animals but we are different than every other animal, and we can be better and do better, and if holding yourself to a higher standard because you were born with sapience is too inconvenient, I’m sure there are some political and ideological groups out there who would love to have you.
edit: I regret spending any time responding to the obvious trolls in this post. Block and move on people. If you ever find yourself having to argue that we’re better than animals, you’re not arguing with someone participating in good faith.
LOL so being against your perspective means validating the worst of humanity? Wow! Such arrogance…
We can “do better” from our own perspective. We are “sapient” from our own perspective.
I’m sure there are also a lot of groups of disgusting people you could fit, but how is that relevant? Is it just that you lack arguments and you resort to insulting a person that you don’t know? Is this what you call being “born with sapience”?
What a petty animal you are…
You sound insufferable
😎
To be very crass, animals also rape other animals, and I hope to god that you will not use “but we are animals” as an argument there as well.
We are different from other animals in that we are moral agents. We can know the difference between good and bad. That makes us responsible to act upon that difference, too.
You think very lowly of other animals if you think they have no morals, or no discerning of good and bad.
Or are you valuing your specific moral more than theirs? Because that’s a very classic specist reasoning, with no basis whatsoever except human arrogance.
Also, humans rape other humans too, so how do you justify this? Are rapists not moral agents? You consider them beasts, different animals than yourself?
Then what makes a human a human, what makes them the moral agent you talk about? Is it the respect of the law? Is it a particular neurological state?
More importantly, do you really need this sort of validation to be “good”? Do you need to believe that you are different? That you have a responsibility? That you are “better” than other animals?
Are you not capable of being equally “good” even knowing that morals are relative? That there is no actual universal good? That you have nothing more than other animals?
I don’t engage with kids trying to troll, get lost.
Stay safe in your bubble.
They get a free pass because they are cute.
Have you ever seen felines hunting?
Devastating scenes. CW: I’m going to eat you little fishy
Cats are neither human, nor do they boil their kills just because they can. Cats kill, yes. Cats are murderous little fuckers, yes.
However the issue the above poster is talking about isn’t about killing of whatever. Or about eating meat. Their point was about doing it in as humane a way as possible.
Cats are neither human, nor do they boil their kills just because they can.
But, we all know they would if they could.
We don’t boil lobsters just because we can, but because we cook our food.
I said felines by the way, so cats AND all others too.
Have you ever seen lions hunting their prey and eating it from its ass while it is still trying to run away?
Or playing with their prey before eventually strangling it?
That’s their way of doing it, it’s gruesome but it’s fine.
We have our own ways of doing it too, some methods are even considerably more painless than others.
Also you should note your own use of “humane”, that’s a key point there. All this talk is just human specist nonsense.
Last but not least, I could even argue (as a human) that it’s ridiculous to judge what killing method is acceptable (and even what is acceptable to eat) based on things like pain, or having a nervous system.
FUCK YOU AND YOUR SPECIST CRINGE ARGUMENTS! Killing a human, a lobster, a mosquito or a tomato plant is just killing, no matter what lies you tell yourself.
Haha, all those words that I didn’t read…and yet I still know they all amount to “I’m an angry tool”.
No worries, I understand that it’s too much text to process for some individuals.
Yeah, it’s deffo that. And it’s definitely not that you are an angry tool that posts rants about shit that’s got nothing to do with boiling lobsters, haha.
Yeah, it’s deffo that. And it’s definitely not that you are an angry tool that posts rants about shit that I don’t understand, haha.
FIFY
Yeah. I kinda like meat, but seriously. At least make it quick and/or painless, not torture.
which animal can 100% agree with you on that? maybe crabs but even then maybe not
pain isn’t bad.
you are projecting your fear of pain onto other animals.
also you are implying animals that kill and ate other animals, are bad. there is no morality outside of human societies
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Yes, and we humans clearly live outside of human societies and thus we shouldn’t hold ourselves to human moral standards.
It’s cute how we set ourselves apart from nature, and use terms like “humane” to mean better, refined, less brutal, yet the moment that notion might even slightly inconvenience us, then we’re just animals.
Humanity? Pfft, fuck that! We’re just animals. We’re like cats, or dolphins!
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Imagine how vegans must feel about the world lol
Vegans don’t care about the natural world with regards to suffering caused by the natural world itself. That’s just how things are.
Vegans instead are more interested in suffering caused by humans inflicted on the natural world. This suffering can be more or less wicked than what you’d find out in the wild.
Big distinction.
Pretty poorly, all things considered.
Inb4 plants feel just as much pain
Yeah but they are masochists and they like it.
Time to chew rocks
In that moral framework ig fruits and veggies would be fine since the plant wants us to eat it
there is no proof plants want anything
Pretty sure we’re supposed to surgically extract the seeds after anaesthetizing the fruits whilst it’s still on the tree.
I don’t know much about it but Jains in India actually have rules about causing minimal harm to all living things
You monster!
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.
At my grocery store, pork tenderloin and chicken wings are $6/lb, and pork shoulder or chicken breasts are $3/lb. Bacon starts at $5/lb for the scraps.
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
It always comes back to demolition man
Not looking forward to the clamshells… maybe lobster claws could be a cheap alternative?
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.
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.
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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.
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.
It’s such a non issue to dispatch a lobster before throwing it into the pot using your method. The guys who are against it are just fucking assholes.
Maybe the citizens have been asking for them to deal with lobbyists and they just misheard
I do think it’d be more humane to not boil lobbyists alive. We can find less grotesque ways to dispatch them.
I for one think it’s highly appropriate
I think boiling is a little too traditional for me. Personally I think the good old fashioned French methods cut just right, you know?
I worked at a country club that would, occasionally, and on the hush hush for VIPS inject them still live, with a syringe of boiling butter, poaching them from the inside out. I believe that is the old fashioned French method
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.
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.
it was a common clause in servants contracts limiting how many meals a week they could be given lobster
Can you imagine, hahaa
Honestly not missing much. I don’t get all the fuss, plenty of other seafood that imo tastes loads better.
focus
How much “focus” does something like this actually require?
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.
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.
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.
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
Ikr. They stopped the lobsters from being slowly boiled alive but not their own citizens lol
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.
This is how I found out that lobsters don’t have a single centralized brain like humans do.
Lobster as Lemmy mascot when?
So, how WOULD you kill it without pain?
Not at all would be fine.
Sure. But, like, is this law pointless? Because unless it bans it altogether (and the comment I replied to is correct about the pain) then it sounds like it’s pointless.
People said freezing. But that just sounds like more psuedo science. Is it science based? Or is it just “people say”.
Freezing just slows them down. A lot of lobsters are caught in the Atlantic around Maine, they can handle your fridge just fine, and your freezer for a painfully long amount of time.
Give them a shot of morphine first
Lol I could see this becoming a delicacy- lobster that gets you high when you eat it
It’s about as massive a thing as plastic straws and that annyoing little tab in all caps now.
The best I know is to freeze them first, not like solid, but just for an hour or so which makes them super lethargic.
You can just put them in the fridge. They don’t need to be in the freezer.
Then drive a knife through their head. Dead before they know what’s happening.
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.
i guess the moral question is whether that’s arguably significantly more humane than skipping the severing step. to me it seems possibly unknowable; either way the thing does suffer the slaughter and the question is to what degree. if there’s any culinary or other practical advantage to doing it, and folks believe it’s more humane, why not…
Good.
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.”
boiled potatoes are barbaric, agree. roasting and frying is the way to go
dumb
