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
    11·
    7 days ago

    Good reply.

    Though…

    whereas humans do this entirely because “it is more delicious that way”. This is the right context.

    is that the reason given? That it’s more delicious to boil them alive rather than kill them at their head? If so, what’s the reasoning behind that reasoning? Like… do some more of the tasty juices remain in the lobster if not peircing/smashing their head first? I had imagined it was done that way simply because it was easier (/ safer, like if the claws were not adequately banded shut before taking the knife towards their heads).

    Even the comparison “lesser of two evils” is not in the right context because it becomes more evil to the degree that you understand the other side’s suffering.

    Agree. To an extent. (At least one) Exception warrants caution, in so far as induced ignorance is used to excuse atrocities. Though then the active point of contention’s merely around the word “evil”, and the many reams that can be written exploring and critiquing it, with or without missing the harms beyond that.

    • Avicenna@programming.devEnglish
      3·
      6 days ago

      Perhaps “entirely because of taste” is an over statement. It is in reality probably a mixture of freshness and taste, the former being related both to food safety and taste. Nevertheless, living in a world of sea food abundance (and others), if you can not prepare a certain item of food safely without torturing an animal and yet still do it, then you are not doing this for survival but ultimately validating a tortorous means of cooking as a means to reach a certain pleasure. I myself, despite not eating lobsters, lambs, goose liver etc for this very reason, still for instance consume eggs knowing that chicken farms can practice male chick culling where I live. So it is not my intention to point fingers at anyone but just pointing out some observations and some of my inner contradictions on this issue.