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.
Humans and other mammals release cortisol as part of the pain response.
So do lobsters.
They feel pain when they are boiled alive.
That alone should be enough information for a sane person to think “huh, if they feel pain maybe I should put in a small amount of effort to make sure they don’t suffer when I kill them” instead of trying to justify why it’s ok and use thinly veiled insults aimed at those of us who don’t think animals suffering from avoidable pain is acceptable.
Disregarding the pain of something just because it doesnt have a cute face or fur is far more evidence of mental illness tbh.
The presence of cortisol does not mean that the experience of pain is equitable between humans and lobsters.
It certainly indicates it. It’s certainly a much more plausible explanation than not feeling anything. Fucking strawman argument so thst you can, what, save 2 minutes of your time and not have to kill it humanely?
No, it doesn’t indicate that. It only shows that cortisol is present in both, it doesn’t conclude anything about the subjective experience. You can’t even say ‘pain’ is what the lobster experiences, or what the nature of lobster experience even is. Even humans don’t all feel pain the same way, some even enjoy the experience.
We used to perform surgery on infant humans without anaesthetics because we believed them to be lesser beings incapable of feeling pain. Scientific consensus shifted.
With enough evidence. The presence of cortisol doesn’t prove a lobster’s subjective experience is equitable to humans. Furthermore, that consensus can shift again so even current science isn’t settled, science is never settled.
I suppose I didn’t really express my point. Is it just not better to err on the side of caution? I’m not saying to not eat lobster, people dictating what others should and shouldn’t eat is a massive pet-peeve of mine, but it’s not hard to find alternative prep suggestions that don’t really add much in the way of effort, that’s thought to be more humane.
Personally, I don’t think lobsters experience the world the same way we do. The notion is ridiculous from a physiological standpoint. But it’s equally ridiculous, and reeks of a more or less biblical human exceptionalist perspective, to assume that humans alone possess various traits that are evolutionarily advantageous, like for example the sensation of pain.
And if we’re down to splitting hairs about “well the way other animals feel pain is different” then we’re in purely philosophical territory. Rather akin to “how do I know that the colour I view as green is the same thing you view as green?”
Better how? It’s has zero impact on anything. The lobster dies in seconds and the moment is past. All this effort to satisfy the overactive empathy of a minority of human beings with big, judgemental mouths. Suffering is everywhere and inevitable. Much of it caused by humans. Life is very capable of enduring suffering and it helps shape and grow organisms in important ways. I don’t see suffering as an inherent evil that needs to be eliminated.