Boiling lobsters alive to be banned in England amid animal cruelty crackdown
www.theguardian.com
Move is part of a long-awaited Labour strategy including outlawing hen cages and ending puppy farming

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.

  • Digit@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    0·
    5 months ago

    Lobsters eat each other.

    What’s more cruel?

    Boiled for 35-45 seconds before death?

    Or

    Being crushed and dismembered bit by bit, being gnawed on, for many minutes, and possibly even being left in parts, to suffer on for longer yet, after the other lobster had its fill?

    When I eat prawns, I often think of this, often putting it context how I’m not doing anything they don’t do to each other, simply meaning they know how tasty they are, and eat each other… but seeing this, makes me realise how much less cruel what I’m doing to them is, than they do to each other.

    I’m open to even more humane ways to dispatch them, of course, not resting on any “lesser evil” fallacy, but also, lets not remove this context entirely.

    Also, while we’re talking context…

    The government in the UK, last decade, committed assault and fraud, dereliction of duty of care, torturing and starving and denying medication, transport, and nearly every human right, to the disabled poor, propagandising against them to drum up hate with more fraud, to cull over 130,000 people in a very slow cruel way. So it’s a little rich to think these tories (no matter if blue, yellow, or red), now “care”. Those who were Killing people over durations often into the months and years of suffering, are now concerned for lobsters suffering for seconds?

    • Eugene V. Debs' Ghost@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
      01·
      5 months ago

      I was walking along the bank of a stream when I saw a mother otter with her cubs, a very endearing sight, I’m sure you’ll agree. And even as I watched, the mother otter dived into the water and came up with a plump salmon, which she subdued and dragged onto a half submerged log.

      As she ate it, while of course it was still alive, the body split and I remember to this day the sweet pinkness of its roes as they spilled out, much to the delight of the baby otters, who scrambled over themselves to feed on the delicacy. One of nature’s wonders, gentlemen. Mother and children dining upon mother and children.

      And that is when I first learned about evil. It is built into the very nature of the universe. Every world spins in pain. If there is any kind of supreme being, I told myself, it is up to all of us to become his moral superior.

      Lord Vetinari in Unseen Academicals by Terry Pratchett