Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/09/20/maine-restaurant-getting-lobst.html
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Don’t get me wrong, I begrudge no creature a little bud. But is this one of those places that cooks the lobsters alive? If so, I have a better idea about how to make their demise less excruciating.
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“…the restaurant is still experimenting with a process where the crustacean is steamed for six minutes, then cooking the body and tail under an additional 420 degrees. Gill’s 82-year-old father is the test subject…”
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Maybe. Or maybe in that cardboard box, drugged into submission, he realized the futility of escape and convinced the others later in the holding tank.
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Wait, are they boiling these baked lobsters? Talk about overcooking…
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I think they meant easing the lobsters distress overall, from the time they’re in the tank up to when they are killed to be cooked.
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Chill it in the freezer and then run a knife directly center through the frontal head space along the upper back. Like shown here.
The deed is done. I have eaten many a lobster in my 45 yrs and 99% of it has been at home where I cook them myself. I do not feel bad for the creature, any more than a shark feels bad when he bites into a seal, or a parasite feels bad when they infect me. Food chain. This is how it works.
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Test lobster: “Oh man, I think these people are going to kill me and eat me.”
His friends: “No way man. The weed is just making you paranoid.”
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All of this humanely killing a lobster stuff is nonsense. These creatures have a vastly different neurological system then ours. They also happen to be much, much more sensitive to temperature differences than us.
Stabbing one in the head may reduce motility but it’s really up in the air as to whether that’s a better outcome or not.
The fact of the matter is: these creatures see the gates of hell before we eat them. They undeniably suffer.
I eat them. I will continue to do so. I think it’s just ethical to realize the scope of our actions; whether we like it or not.
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Judging by a few posts i think the article wasn’t very clear, the gist of what they were trying to test was not make their death more humane than it already is (its already fairly efficient), it’s their living conditions in the restaurant. The lobsters are highly stressed once caught, shipped, and stored on site at the restaurant. The THC is a test to see if they can calm the lobsters and make their time on site easier on them. If anything it would probably make the meat taste better as stress generally affects the taste of the meat for various animals.
If you still think the whole thing is useless or stupid then i don’t know what else to tell you. I think its a fairly harmless test, and if the food is good why should you care if they want to make the lobster’s last moments comfortable?
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I don’t knock the goal of reducing suffering.
I would point out that this isn’t a team of biologist with a scientific method: it’s restauranteurs trying to sell more lobster. For all we know these creatures are put into a catotonic state of fear.
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Totally, i think it should be done correctly, Their heart is in the right place, but this is the kind of testing that is likely needed to be done by experts.
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Are they at peace, or just paralyzed? 
Heh, I agree with both of you - we don’t know that it’s doing what we might assume, and it’s hard to know how we’d know, and we should be careful with claims based on anthropomorphization, but good on these folks for trying anyways.
I don’t think there are any non-lobster experts on how it feels to be a lobster, though, although there might be people claiming it.
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Yeah, I think this is the only really human answer at this point we can trust. Killing the cns is the only thing we can be sure causes the fastest death.
I mean lobsters might have cannabinoid receptors, seems like some invertebrates do https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16599912 But assuming that pot is relaxing for invertebrates is just crazy. It could do nothing, it could induce panic, we don’t know.
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And to that point…it’s about eating sustainable food sources.
Don’t get “fresh maine lobster” from west coast establishments. They are clearly not sustainably harvested and to some comments above the animals are clearly in stressful situations for a prolonged period of time. Do eat them on the east coast where they are readily available…harvested from sustainable waters…and are truly a “farm to table” food source.
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This would be one step closer to making lobster kosher. Somebody tell the LORD.
The lesson here is never trust someone who offers free drugs.
Not so much “undeniably”. Lobsters do have a vastly different neurological system than we do. In that they do not have brains. They have multiple clusters of nerves widing out at a few places around the body. These creatures arent just pre-brain. They’re pre-brainstem.
There’s some level of debate over whether they have the capacity to suffer in the first place. But for the most people with expertise or an understanding of how lobsters are put together come down the nope side of things.
And they sure as shit don’t have the neurotransmitters or receptors needed to have any reaction to weed.
Lobsters don’t have a CNS. They have a distributed nervous system, destroying the ganglion in the head doesn’t kill it. It just leaves it unable to direct or coordinate its movements. From what I undestand steaming does the best job of destroying all the ganglia at once. And renders the lobster effectively dead in less tham a minute. But a dead lobster can and does keep moving because of the way they’re built.
Barring mislabeling any lobster labeled “maine lobster” has to come from the Maine fishery. The Maine and Canadian lobster fisheries are among the most sustainable fisheries in the world. There are strictly controlled quotas managed by co-ops, no female lobsters are taken. Maine and canadian lobster stocks are healthier than they’ve been in decades. And the only east coast lobster fisheries that aren’t collapsing.
I still might not buy them on the west coast. For quality and price reasons.
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I see what they did there.
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