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.
I’ve worked in restaurants, so I’m used to a certain level of psychopathising among chefs. I don’t know if it’s changed in the last two decades, but in that context I interpreted their comment as being slightly grumpy at being told how to do their jobs.
If they gleefully talked about using the live animal as a sex toy, for example, that would arrive in my brain as an allusion to romantic difficulties.
Just putting that out there. The whole argument looks like cultural differences to me. I don’t think any chef would actually prefer animal cruelty… I did once hear a maître’d joke that cruelty makes food taste better, though.
Okay, so I have a guy in a chef hat fucking a lobster image in my head. Thanks….
A spoonful of sugar, I always say
They prefer animal cruelty in the “I had to do it, so you should too!” kind of way.