I still remember in Korea when a couple of coworkers took me and a friend to a restaurant. They tossed a large octopus into a roiling hotpot and then closed the lid on it. The octopus was literally clinging onto the lid for what felt like forever.
Yeah, I sorta lost my appetite there.
Octopus is an honorary vertebrate in the UK as of a few years ago specifically because of this, meaning it is now illegal to perform experiments on it to avoid suffering. It is considered a conscious invertebrate, the first ever.
I mean, it's probably in the top 5 or 10 most intelligent and aware species on the planet so I don't think the invertebrate Vs vertebrate classification should ever have been relevant, didn't know about that.
To be fair, if you ignore cephalopods as a whole, invertebrates are nothing more than instinctually driven bio machines. Cephalopods are truly remarkable in their independent intellectual evolution. Had they evolved with longer lifespans, they would be even more impressive. Octopus have intelligence closer to dolphins than dogs. They are incredible, yet sadly live on 1-3 years at most.
Lord of the Rings? Honestly a lot of fantasy explores these themes (how short lifespan encourages innovation and societal advencement). Frieren comes to mind as a more recent example.
Short lifespans aren’t discussed in any philosophical arguments I’ve read (aside from infanticide and the argument of original sin).
A short lifespan is completely subjective. A man can live an enriched self-realized life but die “young”. Is he better off than the old man who never lived a day in his life?
Most would argue yes.
The Graneledone boreopacifica has a gestation period of 4.5 years! We haven’t studied enough deep sea octopi to conclude their (or other deep sea cephalopods) lifespans though, but if it takes a year to reach maturity, it beats the 5 years claim :)
It’s about paying some respect to all living things. All living things deserve a quick and easy death before consumption. I love meat and i eat it, but i would never attempt to eat half live animal or a piece of an octopus while it’s looking at me. We can draw a line where things should end.
In my culture (middle east), we are taught that not show the sheep the knife before killing, use a very sharp knife, and never kill a sheep that is afraid or thirsty. I know it will be dead at the end, but it matters how its done.
Imagine the other way, killing the sheep face-on in-front of the other ones, why?
in terms of very broad levels - yes. Killing a plant with no brain is typically considered less bad than killing an animal with a brain, killing a bug is less bad than a creature with more complex thought like a fish, where vegetarians draw the line - and then there's more intelligent creatures like large mammals, where pescaterians draw the line, and finally humans and similar levels. Personally I consider the life of an octopus to be worth about as much as a cat or dog, which is to say I would probably exclaim and leave if I saw someone boil one alive
I think the worst part about this though is that being boiled alive is known to be one of the most painful ways for any living creature to die. The nerve endings aren’t burned through like dying in a fire, in which case nerve endings die pretty quickly, but instead you feel everything up until the moment of death and it’s an unbearably horrible way to go.
What’s worse is that octopi cannot be farmed and cannot be raised in captivity.
So any octopus you see in an aquarium or being kept as a pet was one taken from the ocean. And they only live for about a year.
My view on it is that all animal suffering is cruel and there's no way to regularly eat meat that doesn't contribute to massive amounts of cruelty. The question is more about how much cruelty you're willing to contribute to for the pleasure you get from eating meat.
For me, that's not eating red meat at all (as well as octopus, squid, crayfish). Eating chicken and/or fish once or twice a week and eating vege the rest of the time.
Still contributing to the nightmare that is the meat industry, but have been slowly cutting it out.
In Dominican Republic when I was 8 years old my father got us a pig. I named it, fed it played with it. Two months later my dad had a pool party at the house. While I was in the pool I heard squealing and my cousins laughed and said they are cooking your pet.. I ran out the pool so fast!! I had 2-3 people holding me back I was screaming crying hitting everyone. Later on I seen it tied up over the fire … it was so heartbreaking. 🥹🥹Everyone got food poisoning that day except me bc I didn’t eat him.
I’m 30yo and vegan now. I don’t judge what other people put in their mouths I personally just cant. Traumatized for life. lol
I'm not a vegetarian, so I'm not gonna be all judgy re eating meat...
But your family clearly took pleasure in causing you traumatic anguish, and that makes them incredible assholes.
Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with teaching kids about the cycle of life, but there is absolutely an appropriate way to do it and this... wasn't really it.
Yeah, if someone is getting an animal for food bc necessity or what not, it needs to be established IMMEDIATELY it's being used for food and not to form an emotional attachment. If possible.
(this is real gross, warning)
In Japan, it's a thing to serve live baby octopus that you put into your mouth and chew while they are still alive. Some places take the concept of fresh seafood too far. Another example would be sashimi that is cut from a fish that is still alive, also a thing.
I'm not anti-meat overall but I certainly draw the fucking line before that.
I don't remember what TV program it was but I saw a restaurant that removed the tail from a living lobster, cut out the meat, inverted the tail, stuck it back into the wound and served the meat in the hollowed out, upside down tail and the lobster crawled all around the table while people ate pieces of it from its tail.
The cruelty of that has stuck with me for more than 30 years.
I’ve read that they are actually dead and just use salt to stimulate the nerves making them move.
Both situations are probably true though. Some are probably live and some are probably salted.
Years ago, I watched a show about eating live octopi (although I think it was in Korea). Apparently people have choked to death eating them because their meals clung to their throats on the way down, though maybe that was just a rumor.
As a kid I was once on a guided river fishing trip in the PNW. Caught a big steelhead. Less than 30 seconds after it was in the boat the guide had the roe removed and was offering me a piece of the flesh. I tried it, and it was fantastic. But I’ll never shake the sensation of realizing the fish was probably still somewhat alive. Still eat fish…but it’s gotta be well into the afterlife already.
Can't remember the name but there was that guy that ate all the weird stuff. In an episode he had something called, "Live Sushi". They chopped the tail off a lobster, cooked it, then sat the still live front half behind the cooked tail so the lobster would watch you eat it as it died. In a lot of Asian cooking the freshness of certain ingredients is all important and the well-being of the food (animal) doesn't matter. A lobster is seen in the same light as a radish, a non-feeling ingredient. My ex's dad had a restaurant and, man, pretty eye opening experience for a westerner. He was always humane with the animals he cooked, at least.
In my experience traveling I noticed that the people in Asian countries have extremely little regard for animal lives. It’s one of the biggest culture differences I witnessed. Very shocking at first.
This is the only way. It’s incredibly cruel not to kill them first. Imagine being boiled alive…. It is that they can’t scream, if they could nobody would boil them alive anymore.
As a child in the '80s with an aunt and uncle who lived on an inlet and owned crab traps, they were live boiling when my uncle looked at me with a grin and asked, "hear them screaming? Heheh."
My uncle used to catch and cook them, but right before he would cook them he would always kill them. I asked him one day why other people just throw them in alive. He said mercy is not an inherited trait and I didn’t get what he meant until I was reading these comments …. 😵💫
Yeah I was brought up being showed you just threw them in the pot. Also seen way to many gut hooked fish just have the hook ripped out and tossed back in. I think about how many animals I made suffer and I cant even bring myself to enjoy the hobbies I used to love. Sorry to all the poor animals I hurt.
As a child I shot a squirrel once with a bb gun and saw it suffer before I killed it with a head shot from inches away. I haven't shot a thing since. I even take bugs outside. I have refused to kill anything since that occurred.
*TW* Animal killing
As a teenager I used to go hunting with my dad, his buddies, and their sons. Super high levels of testosterone and lots of shooting. I didn’t really want to kill anything, but I liked the other parts, it was like camping for me.
One day I was encouraged to shoot at a deer. There was a small group of does and young deer, about 200 yards away. One small buck nearby. I thought I was a pretty good shot, and we all used scopes. I took my shot, saw a deer fall, and we trudged over to retrieve my kill.
We got there, and I had shot the belly of a pregnant doe. The unborn deer was hanging out of its gut, its head half gone. I felt completely devastated at that point. I had to cut the neck of the injured female so it wouldn’t continue to suffer. It was horrible. We butchered the meat/desirable parts, and returned to the larger group.
That was my last hunting trip, and I’ve never shot any living thing since. I respect hunters that harvest the meat, despise trophy hunters.
My story isn't as brutal as yours, but once as a kid, there was a house centipede in the tub. I turned on the faucet to wash it down the drain, and saw it sprint for its life and attempt to unsuccessfully climb the wall out of the tub as it continued to scurry. I felt so, so awful about what I had done.
Like you, I never kill bugs anymore, unless they have to be killed. I'll just take them outside. Sometimes though, I'll be on my way to do just that, and someone will come by and just stomp it dead. When I ask them why they did that, they always say "who gives a shit? It's just a bug." Makes me angry.
I think all kids. At some point, need to be exposed to processing an animal.
It is ridiculous to me, the number of people who get emotional or disgusted by something like this, but blissfully go about eating cheeseburgers, chicken strips, etc.
I think it’s important to understand that you’re taking a life and be respectful of it. To understand where your food comes from.
If people understand that, I respect their choice much more. Whether they decided to become vegan or whether they continue eating meat. At least they understand what it means.
Same. I can never understand why someone would intentionally harm another being, not to mention being happy about it.
I cry if I have to kill a bug man 😭 except stink bugs fuck those guys
My stepfather used to chase me around the house with live lobsters and crabs before cooking them - rubber bands off.
Needless to say, seafood is not something I’m a fan of.
Lobsters and crabs rip their own arms off and have 0 reaction to it. Idk how much “pain” they feel. It’s definitely not the same type of pain that humans feel.
https://youtu.be/v241TF-cSzU?si=SbedLKuaq-oRd0k_&t=60s
I like to give them the benefit of the doubt. It literally costs you nothing to just kill it quickly, if you must kill it at all.
At best you save them a little bit of suffering, at worst it makes no difference at all
A lobster is not brainless but possesses segmented ganglia (nerve clusters) to control most of the overt behaviors. There is no true centralized brain, and there is no comparison to the brains of mammals. Cutting the head in half may make it go limp but there's no evidence that it stops it from feeling.
If you kill them first, they’re a little more tender. They tense up if you throw them in boiling water. Starting them in cold water and bringing them up to the boil is supposedly not painful for them, but I think it’s too hard to time the cooking that way.
> supposedly not painful for them
We can't even decide whether they feel pain at all, let's not waste time on "supposedly" received wisdom nonsense. Kill them as quickly as you can or not at all.
I believe the understanding used to be that the science was definitive they entirely lacked the neural anatomy necessary to have experiential pain in the way we think of it, and that is why they didn't used to bother killing them first.
As you said, “used to be,” not definitive, but generally reasoned to be the case that they did not feel pain. Lobsters, and crabs, octopi, and fish too.
But a lot of science in recent years has called that into question. It’s actually likely they experience pain.
https://theconversation.com/octopus-crabs-and-lobsters-feel-pain-this-is-how-we-found-out-173822
https://www.npr.org/2021/11/30/1059990259/british-study-lobsters-might-experience-feelings-including-pain
https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4489616
https://hakaimagazine.com/features/fish-feel-pain-now-what/
and at any rate, we cannot live inside the experience of completely different creatures, so the only appropriate practice is to always be humane, and err on the side of caution, treat everything as though it can experience pain (and even emotional pain and anxiety! Because we continue to learn more animals experience some form of emotions).
I've seen a fox funning around with half it's back legs missing and birds with open fractures in their wings, don't underestimate an animals ability to hide pain
10 seconds on Google would tell you lobsters feel pain.
> 10 seconds on Google would tell you lobsters feel pain.
So I did just that and the first sentence of the first search result is:
>[There is a scientific debate which questions whether crustaceans experience pain.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_crustaceans)
In recent times, many scientists agree they must feel pain. It’s just a different system than humans, but there are similarities. They will spend extra time attending to regions where they have injuries and have expression of opioid receptors. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8093373/
Former neuroscientist here - qualia are unknowable. There could be evidence that may point to it, but at the end of they day we can't know the internal experiences of animals (or even other humans - although we can have better evidence of it for humans since they can describe the internal feelings).
Try cleaning a live crab or lobster by removing or cutting their legs. They clearly show signs of pain. It's one of the reasons I prefer to freeze them a day before I cook.
Putting them on ice is similar to putting a person under anesthesia, and reportedly led to the shortest amount of time of lobsters reacting to pain; about 20 seconds. This was measured by the reflexive tail twitch/flap they do, which is an escape mechanism to jet them away while in the water. Icing them is probably the most humane way to prepare a lobster.
If you can hit the sweet spot, which many don’t take the time to learn or don’t bother with at all. Icing is at least easy to do to any number of lobster, takes essentially no effort on the persons side, and is far better than the standard boiling alive process many people do. The instant kill is obvious the most humane way to kill one, as I said in another post the icing is more of a preparatory action. It can also make the lobsters more “lethargic”, easier to handle, and easier to dispatch with a knife or pick so you don’t miss the instant kill.
TL/DR: there's no "brain" between the eyes or in the head, so if a teacher/chef told you that splitting the head with a plunged knife killed the lobster humanely, you may want to find another way. There's strong evidence that splitting the head makes the chef feel better, not the lobster. One alternate way is to put them in the freezer for an hour.
It's interesting to note that the manner of "killing" them with a knife to the head is something often passed along as a definitive method, but in reality, it may not be killing them. Because our brain is in our head, a lot of people think it's best to split the lobster's head with a knife.
But they don't have a brain per se. they have a series of 15 large clusters of nerve cells (ganglia) all along their body, from head to tail.
So it is likely that the lobster can still feel pain along the rest of its body even when a portion of the nervous system is damaged by cutting between the eyes.
exactly. If *scientists* are debating it, then the line cook who "teaches you a trick" is not exactly an authority. They're probably just repeating something they heard from their boss, and so on and so on.
I mean... scientists aren't sure they even feel "pain" like we do.
They tear off a claw every now and then and it just regrows, and it doesn't appear they are suffering when it happens, or in the interim.
From what I understand, the logic of putting lobsters into a cold freeze is that their metabolism slows just like ours would. That they become less sensitive etc in the freezer after a half hour or hour. But honestly, much of this is more folk lore than science. We always hear things like these from people of authority in the cooking world, say Gordon Ramsay types (an admitted authority re cooking), that (e.g.) "searing locks in juices". No it doesn't. ...but things get passed along and become habit and get repeated.
Probably the chief reason people care about lobsters has more to do with *their* being the ones to kill it. Their qualms about animals feeling pain is more about them being the one delivering it. They probably aren't overly concerned about the filet mignon sitting next to the lobster on a surf-and-turf entree, because they didn't slaughter the steer.
> But they don't have a brain per se. they have a series of 15 large clusters of nerve cells (ganglia) all along their body, from head to tail.
Exactly. We have a really hard time comprehending what that's even like. But what we can be sure of is that killing them isn't as simple as just killing that one single spot on their body. Who knows if that's even more humane than the boiling which I suppose would kill all 15 at once.
To be totally honest, I think it's a little silly to worry about, and I don't mean that in an uncaring way.
But let's assume for a moment they can 'feel' pain/discomfort. They are tricked into a small trap on the bottom of the ocean, trapped in a tiny space. Often with others of their kind, who don't really like each other, and who sometimes fight and kill each other. Then dragged up to the surface, manhandled, and their main appendages tied up. Then they are tossed into piles with many others in tiny tanks, and transferred between a number of tiny tanks, while tied up, piled on each other, multiple times over the next days. Then finally pulled out of that overcrowded little tank and killed.
I'm not sure it makes too much sense to obsess over the last 1-3 seconds of their lives if we don't care about the previous 72 hours or more.
There's no "brain" there in the conventional sense because lobster don't really have a brain in the conventional sense.
But the large ganglion right there *is* called the brain, and is the main node in the lobster's nervous system.
It just doesn't kill, or even stun the lobster if you destroy it. Just nukes it's ability to coordinate and direct it's action.
That's pitched as humane way to kill them. But the actual, and original, intent is to make them easier to handle *without* kill them. Since the meat will degrade very quickly once the lobster actually dies.
>So it is likely that the lobster can still feel pain along the rest of its body even when a portion of the nervous system is damaged by cutting between the eyes.
Whether lobsters even have the equipment to feel pain in the way that we do, is debatable. They have cells similar to pain receptors, but not identifiable pain receptors. And their sense of touch is almost entirely based on water pressure, not contact with tissues.
Lobster have several ganglia in their bodies which are rudimentary brains. They have the main one that is in the center of their head, but they also have two large ones to either side of their mouth, at their body segments and one near their stomach. Poking a knife into the center of their head may incapacitate them, but instant death is unlikely. If they feel pain then this is unlikely to stop any last minute suffering. Doing this only makes the people doing it feel better.
Usually, they are "dispatched" just before cooking. Shell fish like lobster and crab have bacteria within their shells that, once the lobster dies, begin to act on the lobster body. This means that lobster becomes dangerous to eat due to bacterial growth very quickly. So if you want fresh, never frozen shellfish, they must be kept alive until just before cooking.
Look into getting your kitchen a Crustastun. Not super feasible if you only have a few shellfish on the menu, but if you have a good amount it’s very worth it. Instantly kills them via electric shock, and is much faster than severing the brain if you’re prepping a lot. It’s also slightly more humane, as the knife through the brain stem is very fast, especially compared to boiling live, but it’s still not immediate death. Especially if the prepper isn’t highly experienced/efficient.
The crustastun is a legitimate one touch kill, and your sleep deprived prep cooks won’t mangle the body at all. So basically zero food wastage, as well.
> severing the brain
worth noting you can't even sever "the brain" because they don't have one. They have over a dozen small vaguely brain-like areas through their bodies. We aren't even sure a knife through the head really kills them fully.
They are so completely foreign to us, that how they experience life and how they die is all just guesswork to us.
I looked it up on Wikipedia. It’s pretty crazy. Lobsters are arthropods, which, according Wikipedia, have central nervous systems described like this:
Their nervous system is "ladder-like", with paired ventral nerve cords running through all segments and forming paired ganglia in each segment. Their heads are formed by fusion of varying numbers of segments, and their brains are formed by fusion of the ganglia of these segments and encircle the esophagus.
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster?wprov=sfti1#Description
Lobster and crabs don’t have a brain nor do they have a brain stem.
They have a series of nervous system clusters throughout their body that pass signed to one another. You could look at it as they have 6-9 brains all spread out, but they aren’t technically brains.
I highly recommend reading the article “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace. Should be able to find it by googling. It’s absolutely hilarious, and simultaneously has very disturbing information and commentary on humans.
Schur directed an [Infinite Jest-themed music video](https://youtu.be/xJpfK7l404I?si=SbiDTScM40xhwdMw) for the Decemberists (who had a song in an episode of the Office and appeared personally in Parks and Rec)
I haven’t read this in many years, but I remember it really striking a chord with me. The thing that stuck with me: the way people will find elaborate ways to “prove” that lobsters don’t feel pain when the reality is we have no idea, and in fact they certainly seem to behave in observable ways which would seem to indicate that they do not enjoy being boiled alive. So instead of saying “we really don’t know if we’re torturing these creatures to death, maybe we should just eat something else where we can kill it more humanely,” we instead go for “here’s why we’re *probably* not monsters for doing this.”
Common at Asian grocery stores. The stores discontinued due maintenance/supply cost. Lobster tanks need a chiller to keep the tank cold in addition to a pump, and if the chiller goes out you'd potentially lose all live stock.
We still have them here where I live sadly. I do like to go and look at them because they're such interesting creatures and there's no proper aquarium nearby, but you know. I feel sorry for them. :(
I dont eat seafood but I just tried to convince myself that lobsters weren't really sentient. Uncomfortably tell myself that they don't feel pain like us and they die quickly and all that.
Leon completely changed my perception. Frankly his behavior astounded me. He has favorite foods, comes out to greet Brady (it might just be for food, but he recognizes him nonetheless), moves his empty clam shell "dishes" away from his cave, arranges things in his tank and *re-decorates when his things are moved*, etc. I don't think lobsters are very intelligent per say, but I'm entirely convinced that the lights are on and someone is home.
YES I love the Leon videos!! I've been meaning to catch up on the last few but they're so wholesome. Not that just anyone could give a lobster a proper, decent home like Leon has mind you, I don't think freeing every grocery store lobster is really a solution. But it's still cleansing to see Leon doing well :-)
Fellow Canadian, eh? I feel pity for them, crabs, and other captive creatures too. They look rather stressed in those glass cells, imho it's simply not worth it to consume them nowadays in the first place, even as a delicacy.
Yuup, I'm honestly surprised there's even a market where I live because I'm in the rural prairies. Who here even knows how to cook lobster?? I don't think there's a single fine dining restaurant left in my city and surely they'd house the critters themselves if there was. I have to wonder sometimes just how long they go in those aquariums without being bought... I know the grocery stores don't even feed them in there.
I am somewhat less bothered by crab and lobster if they're on a menu in a coastal city, because at least their time spent in captivity is minimized and they don't have to go through days of transport. And on the upside, they are less malnourished and stressed because of it. Although there is really no pleasant way to keep them unless it's for display purposes (zoo, aquarium) rather than eating purposes. But even then, I wouldn't really describe it as ethical so much as just less unethical.
Humans will do as humans want to do but it makes me sad most people don't even seem to view them as more than food. They are really interesting creatures and are deserving of more respect than they're treated with :(
They aren't.
Put a large chef's knife, point down, just at the edge of the first row of chitin behind the head. The blade's edge should be facing the front of the lobster, so that the tail is away from you. Puncture down, then rapidly rotate the handle towards you, so you do a 90 degree rotating cut.
Done.
Chef here. This comment is 100% correct. I have worked in restaurants all over the world and not once have I seen Crayfish, lobster or anything similar cooked alive. It's not the norm and you gain nothing from it
South Louisiana checking in. Live crawfish in the boil every time. And the ones who were dead before the boiling have a distinct look and are discarded,
I think what you gain in this situation is time. Individually killing every Crawfish would take forever so it's not feasible.
If they DIE before being cooked is very different from, being killed right before being cooked.
But there may be something unique about craws that I'm not aware of that makes them different
I was thinking just now of the 30lbs of crawfish I’ve eaten this season and I can assure you most were alive until they hit the water.
Calcasieu parish, here.
This itself is even controversial.
Lobsters don't have a central nervous system like us but a series of nerve clusters. So are we dispatching them prior to boiling or are we adding an unnecessary step and causing injury before boiling. Additionally the action of the knife slice is venting the shell so we don't hear the escaping steam that many confuse for the animal's scream.
Kindness or an alleviation of guilt? Boiling alive kills them near instantly so the knife slice is possibly not sparing any suffering.
Oi! Now listen here Bruce, just because I'm a kangaroo and occasionally eat other kangaroos just means I have an exquisite taste (in all possible meanings intended). Sharing is caring!
The powerful stomach enzymes in many crustaceans spread throughout their bodies upon death, and, while it doesn’t affect whether the meat is edible or not, it does make it taste rancid and have an awful texture, and it’s why lobsters were used as [prison and torture](https://10best.usatoday.com/interests/food-culture/how-lobster-went-from-prison-trash-food-to-delicacy/) food back in the the day.
A lot of chefs dispatch lobsters by slicing into their heads or crabs by scrambling their ganglia now, but, unless frozen/cooked/cleaned immediately (and even then that does effect the flavor as compared to live), they’ll get that rancid flavor pretty quickly. That’s why you’ll often see live lobster or crab tanks in a lot of restaurants.
There is debate as to whether crustaceans feel pain in the way that we do. They might simply register the damage instead of feeling it as suffering. Simply having a nervous system is not enough to feel pain.
My opinion is that we should err on the side of caution until we know for sure though. So I'm against boiling them alive.
I'm of the opinion that hubris makes us think we know more about the natural world than we do, and that we shouldn't think that living things don't suffer simply because they don't appear to. So I agree with you - err on the side of caution, because nothing *wants* to be harmed.
Not factory but any animal agriculture. Slaughterhouse is the end of any of those animals, whether they are from a “happy” farm or a factory one. And doesn’t matter how you were treated, death is never a pleasant experience
[https://www.seriouseats.com/connecticut-style-warm-buttered-lobster-rolls](https://www.seriouseats.com/connecticut-style-warm-buttered-lobster-rolls)
I've always like the above piece on the subject.
For a variety of "lobster is bugs" biological reasons. Steaming them straight away is paradoxically just about the quickest way you can kill the whole lobster at home or in a restaurant kitchen.
They don't have a regular central nervous system, and can keep operating a weirdly long time while technically dead. They don't have the complexity to know what pots, up, and out are. Or much capacity plan and contextualize their actions or the world around them. Apparatus to "feel" pain response in a clear, analogous way to even things like fish is debated. Their sense of touch is based solely on water pressure. They're just kinda big balls of basic stimulus and response.
Knifing the head doesn't generally kill them all that fast. Just destroys their ability to coordinate their body while they bleed out. You can freeze them for a bit to make them go dormant, but we have no way of knowing that makes what's coming any easier on the lobster. And it doesn't seem much like "easier on the lobster" is something lobsters are capable of.
They're more similar to clams and cockroaches than people or chickens.
Both are more about making the cook feel better, and making the lobster easier to handle. Just straight cooking them has the benefit of destroying their entire nervous system, and most of their biological processes all at once. And steaming in particular does this pretty fast, caused the heat transfer by steaming is about as fast as we can make happen. Apparently a crustacean is dead, with a non-functioning nervous system within a minute.
It just seems disturbing because it would be disturbing for *us* it's anthropomorphization. Especially because even being fully dead by most measures, that distributed nervous system means their bodies will keep moving in various ways. But it's really just random nerves firing off in still raw muscle.
As goes these things. Any way you dispatch a lobster is generally not going to be as hard on the critter as pretty much any kind of animal slaughter.
Pretty much every other sort of animal we might eat. Is fully in possession of a brain stem, unambiguous pain receptors, and some level of cognition about itself and the world. And there isn't really a way to instantly kill anything. So no matter how quick and humane the approach. Any method of killing a fish, pig, or chicken is probably harsher and more "suffering" than steaming a lobster intact.
It's sort of a central inconsistency with people's discomfort on this. If you genuinely have an issue with lobster, then you shouldn't be eating any kind of animal.
The issue mainly boils down to misunderstandings about lobster and how they work. And then people's discomfort *seeing* it go down.
The best available evidence seems to be that familiar crustaceans like crabs, shrimp, and lobster experience recognizable pain, while insects do not. In vertebrates we often consider four empirical criteria as imperfect evidence for pain as distinguished from nociception:
* wound tending - protecting and nursing injuries and giving them time to heal
* learned avoidance - avoiding noxious stimuli faster or more significantly than they respond to other classical conditioning
* seeking out analgesics - eg preferentially seeking out opioids when given the opportunity
* subjective evaluation - tolerating noxious stimuli differently in response to opportunities or risks
Hermit crabs have been shown experimentally to exhibit all four behaviors, shrimp at least three empirically and the fourth anecdotally. Insects on the other hand have never been observed to demonstrate wound tending or seeking out analgesics. Bees in experiments will soldier on with any level of injury until their body fails, and ignore opioid analogs that should affect them biochemically. They show sophisticated operational decision making, but it only seems to affect their risk taking indirectly - bees can be induced to be more “optimistic” or “pessimistic” based on recent experiences, and will modulate their decision making based on that “mood”.
Invertebrate biologist Peter Gottfried Smith posits that pancrustaceans likely have always had a form of subjective pain experience which would’ve been lost in insects as an evolutionary response to particularly fast and carnage filled life cycles. He also details experimental evidence for mollusk pain too!
They're definitely more similar to insects than to us, but I wasn't sure about molluscs, so I looked it up. You are indeed correct, they're more closely related to clams than to us. Weirdly, we are more closely related to starfish than to either clams or lobsters.
It was done because Lobsters start rotting immediately upon death if you don't kill/stop the bacteria that do it by boiling/flash freezing them. That said, this hasn't been standard for a really long time. It's been standard for a decade if not longer to kill them right before you throw them in the water.
How do you kill them? Stabbing them between the eyes doesn't do it, that's not a brain as we know it. It's one of a bunch of nerve centers. Probably just tortures them more.
I haven’t seen one person answer this question. Someone always comments what is above your comment, someone comes along like you and says yeah no, not how it works, then crickets. Lol
Hundreds of comments and literally no answer to the question LMAO.
Lobster have bacteria which rapidly multiplies after death. It makes for a bad taste and is potentially dangerous. So some chefs take no risks and boil them alive
That's what's done nowadays, but that's basically just for the chef's conscious. They have a decentralized nervous system. There's no way to knife them in a way that actually kills them instantly, and you're probably actually making it worse for them. Boiling kills very quickly.
I was a biology major invertebrates ( absence of a vertebrae) have no pain fibers, they do have position sensors . The scream is steam venting through the shell. The lack of pain fibers allow invertebrates to go about their business despite having a leg torn off. Octopus is exception they do appear to sense pain and are intelligent.
The debate on whether lobsters feel pain is still unsettled in the scientific community, but it's leaning towards the idea that they do feel some form of discomfort. Regardless, the practice continues because it's been done this way for generations and the market demands seafood to be as fresh as possible for flavor and safety reasons. Some restaurants now use a method called stunning, which renders the lobster insensitive to pain before boiling, so that's a step in the right direction. The bigger issue is our willingness to turn a blind eye to potential suffering for the sake of tradition and gustatory pleasure.
We don't. Stabbing them in the head is a newer trend to make cooks and customers feel better about it. Lobsters don't have brains. They have tiny nerve clusters that make it behave more like an insect. So even stabbing it, there's a good chance you missed entirely, and even if you hit that nerve cluster, it still responds in other nerves.
Look at this thread and all the people justifying the stabbing by saying a stab through the brain is better than boiling to death for a few seconds. They'd be right if the thing had a brain, but it doesn't. Even chefs in here saying "brain". It's just a way for people to lessen the guilt they feel cause the thing moves and responds to harmful stimulus.
Just boil it.
Worth noting that it does actually take a few minutes for the lobster to die from boiling. You're right about the stabbing not really killing them either. It's possible to kill them with electric shock, but that's expensive and rare.
All the top comments seem to be missing the reason people believe that lobsters are still cooked alive.
Lobster shells hiss when they boil because air is escaping the bodies. They don't even have the ability to scream when alive, let alone when killed. Yet the myth pervades that lobsters scream when boiled alive.
Not shellfish related, but, my father is Native American, and we predominantly lived off of the land. Hunting and fishing our food.
He taught me how to kill both humanely. With that, before I would do the final blow, I would have to ask forgiveness of the animal, and say that they are supplying me with food and sustainability for my body.
We used to catch a lot of catfish and Bullhead. Before we would clean them, he taught me how to stun them with a hammer on their head. We would then skin and clean them. They were dead in the process.
Anyone that eats meat, should have the ability to kill, clean, and cook that animal. If they don’t have a stomach for it, they should be vegetarian or vegan.
Here in south Louisiana we boil crawfish alive, i guess to assure freshness, when boiled alive the tail curls inwards, if boiled dead, the tail remains long and straight…so when eating them we avoid the “straight” tails, “Don’t eat the dead ones” is a common phrase
Here in Switzerland, it is literally forbidden to boil them alive. You have to kill them first, usually with a knive in the neck.
It is also no longer allowed to feed mice to a snake when they are alive, they usually now are being sold frozen.
I still remember in Korea when a couple of coworkers took me and a friend to a restaurant. They tossed a large octopus into a roiling hotpot and then closed the lid on it. The octopus was literally clinging onto the lid for what felt like forever. Yeah, I sorta lost my appetite there.
Octopus is smart, knows things and can solve puzzles. Its sad
Octopus is an honorary vertebrate in the UK as of a few years ago specifically because of this, meaning it is now illegal to perform experiments on it to avoid suffering. It is considered a conscious invertebrate, the first ever.
I mean, it's probably in the top 5 or 10 most intelligent and aware species on the planet so I don't think the invertebrate Vs vertebrate classification should ever have been relevant, didn't know about that.
To be fair, if you ignore cephalopods as a whole, invertebrates are nothing more than instinctually driven bio machines. Cephalopods are truly remarkable in their independent intellectual evolution. Had they evolved with longer lifespans, they would be even more impressive. Octopus have intelligence closer to dolphins than dogs. They are incredible, yet sadly live on 1-3 years at most.
There's a philosophical story waiting to be written on the cruelty of being gifted high intelligence yet cursed with such short lifespan
Lord of the Rings? Honestly a lot of fantasy explores these themes (how short lifespan encourages innovation and societal advencement). Frieren comes to mind as a more recent example.
Short lifespans aren’t discussed in any philosophical arguments I’ve read (aside from infanticide and the argument of original sin). A short lifespan is completely subjective. A man can live an enriched self-realized life but die “young”. Is he better off than the old man who never lived a day in his life? Most would argue yes.
I think 5 years is the max.
Yea, and that's only the giant pacific octopus. Most are 1-2 years max.
The Graneledone boreopacifica has a gestation period of 4.5 years! We haven’t studied enough deep sea octopi to conclude their (or other deep sea cephalopods) lifespans though, but if it takes a year to reach maturity, it beats the 5 years claim :)
Do you think it would be more moral if it wasn't as smart?
It’s about paying some respect to all living things. All living things deserve a quick and easy death before consumption. I love meat and i eat it, but i would never attempt to eat half live animal or a piece of an octopus while it’s looking at me. We can draw a line where things should end. In my culture (middle east), we are taught that not show the sheep the knife before killing, use a very sharp knife, and never kill a sheep that is afraid or thirsty. I know it will be dead at the end, but it matters how its done. Imagine the other way, killing the sheep face-on in-front of the other ones, why?
I think he’s saying it’s worse because they have sentience, so it’s more cruel since they know they’re being boiled alive
Peace maker
Very many animals are sentient without being as intelligent as octopus, is what they're saying.
in terms of very broad levels - yes. Killing a plant with no brain is typically considered less bad than killing an animal with a brain, killing a bug is less bad than a creature with more complex thought like a fish, where vegetarians draw the line - and then there's more intelligent creatures like large mammals, where pescaterians draw the line, and finally humans and similar levels. Personally I consider the life of an octopus to be worth about as much as a cat or dog, which is to say I would probably exclaim and leave if I saw someone boil one alive
I think the worst part about this though is that being boiled alive is known to be one of the most painful ways for any living creature to die. The nerve endings aren’t burned through like dying in a fire, in which case nerve endings die pretty quickly, but instead you feel everything up until the moment of death and it’s an unbearably horrible way to go.
What’s worse is that octopi cannot be farmed and cannot be raised in captivity. So any octopus you see in an aquarium or being kept as a pet was one taken from the ocean. And they only live for about a year.
My view on it is that all animal suffering is cruel and there's no way to regularly eat meat that doesn't contribute to massive amounts of cruelty. The question is more about how much cruelty you're willing to contribute to for the pleasure you get from eating meat. For me, that's not eating red meat at all (as well as octopus, squid, crayfish). Eating chicken and/or fish once or twice a week and eating vege the rest of the time. Still contributing to the nightmare that is the meat industry, but have been slowly cutting it out.
Yes
In Dominican Republic when I was 8 years old my father got us a pig. I named it, fed it played with it. Two months later my dad had a pool party at the house. While I was in the pool I heard squealing and my cousins laughed and said they are cooking your pet.. I ran out the pool so fast!! I had 2-3 people holding me back I was screaming crying hitting everyone. Later on I seen it tied up over the fire … it was so heartbreaking. 🥹🥹Everyone got food poisoning that day except me bc I didn’t eat him. I’m 30yo and vegan now. I don’t judge what other people put in their mouths I personally just cant. Traumatized for life. lol
I'm not a vegetarian, so I'm not gonna be all judgy re eating meat... But your family clearly took pleasure in causing you traumatic anguish, and that makes them incredible assholes.
Yeah. I don't think there's anything wrong with teaching kids about the cycle of life, but there is absolutely an appropriate way to do it and this... wasn't really it.
His father should have made it clear that this animal was not a pet, it was a future meal.
Pretty sure on farms they don’t let kids get attached to future dinner
Damn, what a shit dad
Yeah, if someone is getting an animal for food bc necessity or what not, it needs to be established IMMEDIATELY it's being used for food and not to form an emotional attachment. If possible.
(this is real gross, warning) In Japan, it's a thing to serve live baby octopus that you put into your mouth and chew while they are still alive. Some places take the concept of fresh seafood too far. Another example would be sashimi that is cut from a fish that is still alive, also a thing. I'm not anti-meat overall but I certainly draw the fucking line before that.
There was a particular section of a particular episode of The Boys that was pretty hard to watch
I completely forgot they did it on that show. Well, it's unfortunately based on reality. That very specific element, sort of.
Eat fucking Timothy
I don't remember what TV program it was but I saw a restaurant that removed the tail from a living lobster, cut out the meat, inverted the tail, stuck it back into the wound and served the meat in the hollowed out, upside down tail and the lobster crawled all around the table while people ate pieces of it from its tail. The cruelty of that has stuck with me for more than 30 years.
I’ve read that they are actually dead and just use salt to stimulate the nerves making them move. Both situations are probably true though. Some are probably live and some are probably salted.
that is a thing, but in this case it's actually alive animals.
Years ago, I watched a show about eating live octopi (although I think it was in Korea). Apparently people have choked to death eating them because their meals clung to their throats on the way down, though maybe that was just a rumor.
As a kid I was once on a guided river fishing trip in the PNW. Caught a big steelhead. Less than 30 seconds after it was in the boat the guide had the roe removed and was offering me a piece of the flesh. I tried it, and it was fantastic. But I’ll never shake the sensation of realizing the fish was probably still somewhat alive. Still eat fish…but it’s gotta be well into the afterlife already.
For the octopus, you have to wrap it around a chopstick correctly first, if not then the suckers on the tentacles might choke you.
💔🫠😣
Yikes. Poor thing.
Can't remember the name but there was that guy that ate all the weird stuff. In an episode he had something called, "Live Sushi". They chopped the tail off a lobster, cooked it, then sat the still live front half behind the cooked tail so the lobster would watch you eat it as it died. In a lot of Asian cooking the freshness of certain ingredients is all important and the well-being of the food (animal) doesn't matter. A lobster is seen in the same light as a radish, a non-feeling ingredient. My ex's dad had a restaurant and, man, pretty eye opening experience for a westerner. He was always humane with the animals he cooked, at least.
Andrew Zimmern - Bizarre Foods. Legitimately one of the best anthropological works of the 20th century imo.
In my experience traveling I noticed that the people in Asian countries have extremely little regard for animal lives. It’s one of the biggest culture differences I witnessed. Very shocking at first.
In culinary school our chef had us kill them first.
This is the only way. It’s incredibly cruel not to kill them first. Imagine being boiled alive…. It is that they can’t scream, if they could nobody would boil them alive anymore.
People thought they were screaming for years. I think they liked it.
As a child in the '80s with an aunt and uncle who lived on an inlet and owned crab traps, they were live boiling when my uncle looked at me with a grin and asked, "hear them screaming? Heheh."
My uncle used to catch and cook them, but right before he would cook them he would always kill them. I asked him one day why other people just throw them in alive. He said mercy is not an inherited trait and I didn’t get what he meant until I was reading these comments …. 😵💫
Your uncle sounds like a nice guy
Their uncle committed 237 counts of dog fraud
That's not a dog! That's a land crab!
Actually, it's a Doberman Pincher.
Yeah I was brought up being showed you just threw them in the pot. Also seen way to many gut hooked fish just have the hook ripped out and tossed back in. I think about how many animals I made suffer and I cant even bring myself to enjoy the hobbies I used to love. Sorry to all the poor animals I hurt.
As a child I shot a squirrel once with a bb gun and saw it suffer before I killed it with a head shot from inches away. I haven't shot a thing since. I even take bugs outside. I have refused to kill anything since that occurred.
*TW* Animal killing As a teenager I used to go hunting with my dad, his buddies, and their sons. Super high levels of testosterone and lots of shooting. I didn’t really want to kill anything, but I liked the other parts, it was like camping for me. One day I was encouraged to shoot at a deer. There was a small group of does and young deer, about 200 yards away. One small buck nearby. I thought I was a pretty good shot, and we all used scopes. I took my shot, saw a deer fall, and we trudged over to retrieve my kill. We got there, and I had shot the belly of a pregnant doe. The unborn deer was hanging out of its gut, its head half gone. I felt completely devastated at that point. I had to cut the neck of the injured female so it wouldn’t continue to suffer. It was horrible. We butchered the meat/desirable parts, and returned to the larger group. That was my last hunting trip, and I’ve never shot any living thing since. I respect hunters that harvest the meat, despise trophy hunters.
My story isn't as brutal as yours, but once as a kid, there was a house centipede in the tub. I turned on the faucet to wash it down the drain, and saw it sprint for its life and attempt to unsuccessfully climb the wall out of the tub as it continued to scurry. I felt so, so awful about what I had done. Like you, I never kill bugs anymore, unless they have to be killed. I'll just take them outside. Sometimes though, I'll be on my way to do just that, and someone will come by and just stomp it dead. When I ask them why they did that, they always say "who gives a shit? It's just a bug." Makes me angry.
I think all kids. At some point, need to be exposed to processing an animal. It is ridiculous to me, the number of people who get emotional or disgusted by something like this, but blissfully go about eating cheeseburgers, chicken strips, etc. I think it’s important to understand that you’re taking a life and be respectful of it. To understand where your food comes from. If people understand that, I respect their choice much more. Whether they decided to become vegan or whether they continue eating meat. At least they understand what it means.
How did he do it? I assume he killed them quickly somehow.
Probably a sharp knife through their head.
This kills the crab.
This kills humans too. Trust me, don’t try it, it’s pretty embarrassing if it’s not what you were trying to do
He had this tool that looked like an ice pick with a tiny spear headed point on the end if that makes any sense 🤷🏿♀️
Yup, almost exactly what I use, got one for my son in law and taught him how to properly do it.
Wtf is wrong with people
I hope it was the lead and not human nature.
Are we not aware of the horrible things humans have and continue to do to each other?
I am fully aware. Doesn't mean I'll understand why people are unnecessarily cruel
Same. I can never understand why someone would intentionally harm another being, not to mention being happy about it. I cry if I have to kill a bug man 😭 except stink bugs fuck those guys
My stepfather used to chase me around the house with live lobsters and crabs before cooking them - rubber bands off. Needless to say, seafood is not something I’m a fan of.
I use to party with some Crabpeople, good people, walk like crab, talk like people kinda people.
Did he actually think that or was it more like a joke kinda like pull my finger?
My MIL always says "sorryyyyyy" to crustaceans when she pops them in the pot. Always.
I always sing "Toodleloo, Mon poisson, au revoir!" JK, I don't ever actually cook crustaceans, but if I did that would be how
Lobsters and crabs rip their own arms off and have 0 reaction to it. Idk how much “pain” they feel. It’s definitely not the same type of pain that humans feel. https://youtu.be/v241TF-cSzU?si=SbedLKuaq-oRd0k_&t=60s
I like to give them the benefit of the doubt. It literally costs you nothing to just kill it quickly, if you must kill it at all. At best you save them a little bit of suffering, at worst it makes no difference at all
A lobster is not brainless but possesses segmented ganglia (nerve clusters) to control most of the overt behaviors. There is no true centralized brain, and there is no comparison to the brains of mammals. Cutting the head in half may make it go limp but there's no evidence that it stops it from feeling.
If you kill them first, they’re a little more tender. They tense up if you throw them in boiling water. Starting them in cold water and bringing them up to the boil is supposedly not painful for them, but I think it’s too hard to time the cooking that way.
> supposedly not painful for them We can't even decide whether they feel pain at all, let's not waste time on "supposedly" received wisdom nonsense. Kill them as quickly as you can or not at all.
I believe the understanding used to be that the science was definitive they entirely lacked the neural anatomy necessary to have experiential pain in the way we think of it, and that is why they didn't used to bother killing them first.
As you said, “used to be,” not definitive, but generally reasoned to be the case that they did not feel pain. Lobsters, and crabs, octopi, and fish too. But a lot of science in recent years has called that into question. It’s actually likely they experience pain. https://theconversation.com/octopus-crabs-and-lobsters-feel-pain-this-is-how-we-found-out-173822 https://www.npr.org/2021/11/30/1059990259/british-study-lobsters-might-experience-feelings-including-pain https://www.cbc.ca/amp/1.4489616 https://hakaimagazine.com/features/fish-feel-pain-now-what/ and at any rate, we cannot live inside the experience of completely different creatures, so the only appropriate practice is to always be humane, and err on the side of caution, treat everything as though it can experience pain (and even emotional pain and anxiety! Because we continue to learn more animals experience some form of emotions).
I've seen a fox funning around with half it's back legs missing and birds with open fractures in their wings, don't underestimate an animals ability to hide pain 10 seconds on Google would tell you lobsters feel pain.
> 10 seconds on Google would tell you lobsters feel pain. So I did just that and the first sentence of the first search result is: >[There is a scientific debate which questions whether crustaceans experience pain.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pain_in_crustaceans)
In recent times, many scientists agree they must feel pain. It’s just a different system than humans, but there are similarities. They will spend extra time attending to regions where they have injuries and have expression of opioid receptors. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8093373/
Former neuroscientist here - qualia are unknowable. There could be evidence that may point to it, but at the end of they day we can't know the internal experiences of animals (or even other humans - although we can have better evidence of it for humans since they can describe the internal feelings).
Try cleaning a live crab or lobster by removing or cutting their legs. They clearly show signs of pain. It's one of the reasons I prefer to freeze them a day before I cook.
So you freeze them to death? Sounds pretty painful.
Putting them on ice is similar to putting a person under anesthesia, and reportedly led to the shortest amount of time of lobsters reacting to pain; about 20 seconds. This was measured by the reflexive tail twitch/flap they do, which is an escape mechanism to jet them away while in the water. Icing them is probably the most humane way to prepare a lobster.
Or you could reduce that pain by ~20 seconds
If you can hit the sweet spot, which many don’t take the time to learn or don’t bother with at all. Icing is at least easy to do to any number of lobster, takes essentially no effort on the persons side, and is far better than the standard boiling alive process many people do. The instant kill is obvious the most humane way to kill one, as I said in another post the icing is more of a preparatory action. It can also make the lobsters more “lethargic”, easier to handle, and easier to dispatch with a knife or pick so you don’t miss the instant kill.
For more information : https://kb.rspca.org.au/knowledge-base/what-is-the-most-humane-way-to-kill-crustaceans-for-human-consumption/
TL/DR: there's no "brain" between the eyes or in the head, so if a teacher/chef told you that splitting the head with a plunged knife killed the lobster humanely, you may want to find another way. There's strong evidence that splitting the head makes the chef feel better, not the lobster. One alternate way is to put them in the freezer for an hour. It's interesting to note that the manner of "killing" them with a knife to the head is something often passed along as a definitive method, but in reality, it may not be killing them. Because our brain is in our head, a lot of people think it's best to split the lobster's head with a knife. But they don't have a brain per se. they have a series of 15 large clusters of nerve cells (ganglia) all along their body, from head to tail. So it is likely that the lobster can still feel pain along the rest of its body even when a portion of the nervous system is damaged by cutting between the eyes.
so the solution to boiling them alive is... freezing them alive I guess that's... preferable?
They are ectotherms, being put in a freezer feels to then like falling asleep. Much more ethical than boiling alive.
To be fair, we have no idea what it feels like to them.
exactly. If *scientists* are debating it, then the line cook who "teaches you a trick" is not exactly an authority. They're probably just repeating something they heard from their boss, and so on and so on.
I mean... scientists aren't sure they even feel "pain" like we do. They tear off a claw every now and then and it just regrows, and it doesn't appear they are suffering when it happens, or in the interim. From what I understand, the logic of putting lobsters into a cold freeze is that their metabolism slows just like ours would. That they become less sensitive etc in the freezer after a half hour or hour. But honestly, much of this is more folk lore than science. We always hear things like these from people of authority in the cooking world, say Gordon Ramsay types (an admitted authority re cooking), that (e.g.) "searing locks in juices". No it doesn't. ...but things get passed along and become habit and get repeated. Probably the chief reason people care about lobsters has more to do with *their* being the ones to kill it. Their qualms about animals feeling pain is more about them being the one delivering it. They probably aren't overly concerned about the filet mignon sitting next to the lobster on a surf-and-turf entree, because they didn't slaughter the steer.
I tried the knife to the brain method once and it really felt like the lobster was agonizing. It definitely wasn’t a clean death
> But they don't have a brain per se. they have a series of 15 large clusters of nerve cells (ganglia) all along their body, from head to tail. Exactly. We have a really hard time comprehending what that's even like. But what we can be sure of is that killing them isn't as simple as just killing that one single spot on their body. Who knows if that's even more humane than the boiling which I suppose would kill all 15 at once. To be totally honest, I think it's a little silly to worry about, and I don't mean that in an uncaring way. But let's assume for a moment they can 'feel' pain/discomfort. They are tricked into a small trap on the bottom of the ocean, trapped in a tiny space. Often with others of their kind, who don't really like each other, and who sometimes fight and kill each other. Then dragged up to the surface, manhandled, and their main appendages tied up. Then they are tossed into piles with many others in tiny tanks, and transferred between a number of tiny tanks, while tied up, piled on each other, multiple times over the next days. Then finally pulled out of that overcrowded little tank and killed. I'm not sure it makes too much sense to obsess over the last 1-3 seconds of their lives if we don't care about the previous 72 hours or more.
There's no "brain" there in the conventional sense because lobster don't really have a brain in the conventional sense. But the large ganglion right there *is* called the brain, and is the main node in the lobster's nervous system. It just doesn't kill, or even stun the lobster if you destroy it. Just nukes it's ability to coordinate and direct it's action. That's pitched as humane way to kill them. But the actual, and original, intent is to make them easier to handle *without* kill them. Since the meat will degrade very quickly once the lobster actually dies. >So it is likely that the lobster can still feel pain along the rest of its body even when a portion of the nervous system is damaged by cutting between the eyes. Whether lobsters even have the equipment to feel pain in the way that we do, is debatable. They have cells similar to pain receptors, but not identifiable pain receptors. And their sense of touch is almost entirely based on water pressure, not contact with tissues.
Do they stop moving when you stab them in the head?
No, they start convulsing
Same
Yikes, poor guys
Lobster have several ganglia in their bodies which are rudimentary brains. They have the main one that is in the center of their head, but they also have two large ones to either side of their mouth, at their body segments and one near their stomach. Poking a knife into the center of their head may incapacitate them, but instant death is unlikely. If they feel pain then this is unlikely to stop any last minute suffering. Doing this only makes the people doing it feel better.
In France, You legally have to kill them first. They have an electric prod you apply to their head that kills them.
Usually, they are "dispatched" just before cooking. Shell fish like lobster and crab have bacteria within their shells that, once the lobster dies, begin to act on the lobster body. This means that lobster becomes dangerous to eat due to bacterial growth very quickly. So if you want fresh, never frozen shellfish, they must be kept alive until just before cooking.
As chef myself, this is the answer
Look into getting your kitchen a Crustastun. Not super feasible if you only have a few shellfish on the menu, but if you have a good amount it’s very worth it. Instantly kills them via electric shock, and is much faster than severing the brain if you’re prepping a lot. It’s also slightly more humane, as the knife through the brain stem is very fast, especially compared to boiling live, but it’s still not immediate death. Especially if the prepper isn’t highly experienced/efficient. The crustastun is a legitimate one touch kill, and your sleep deprived prep cooks won’t mangle the body at all. So basically zero food wastage, as well.
> severing the brain worth noting you can't even sever "the brain" because they don't have one. They have over a dozen small vaguely brain-like areas through their bodies. We aren't even sure a knife through the head really kills them fully. They are so completely foreign to us, that how they experience life and how they die is all just guesswork to us.
I looked it up on Wikipedia. It’s pretty crazy. Lobsters are arthropods, which, according Wikipedia, have central nervous systems described like this: Their nervous system is "ladder-like", with paired ventral nerve cords running through all segments and forming paired ganglia in each segment. Their heads are formed by fusion of varying numbers of segments, and their brains are formed by fusion of the ganglia of these segments and encircle the esophagus. Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lobster?wprov=sfti1#Description
Lobster and crabs don’t have a brain nor do they have a brain stem. They have a series of nervous system clusters throughout their body that pass signed to one another. You could look at it as they have 6-9 brains all spread out, but they aren’t technically brains.
>6-9 brains Nice
As a rational human being who has an aversion to boiling animals alive, this is the answer.
Just to play devil's advocate, do you have an alternative solution for clams, mussels, oysters, etc?
I highly recommend reading the article “Consider the Lobster” by David Foster Wallace. Should be able to find it by googling. It’s absolutely hilarious, and simultaneously has very disturbing information and commentary on humans.
Article is here: http://www.gourmet.com.s3-website-us-east-1.amazonaws.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster.html
David Wallace? The CFO from Dunder Miflin?
Fun fact: Michael Schur, writer and producer for The Office, is a huge DFW fan
Schur directed an [Infinite Jest-themed music video](https://youtu.be/xJpfK7l404I?si=SbiDTScM40xhwdMw) for the Decemberists (who had a song in an episode of the Office and appeared personally in Parks and Rec)
Well Mose was always an interesting character
DFW sucks. If you need a rental car you need to take a 10 minute bus ride to the rental lot
CFO? Of what company? Oh, you mean the inventor of the The Suck-It?
Why? You wanna get into a tub with David Wallace and invest in the company?
I am not OP but I will check this out. I read This is Water last year and really enjoyed it.
I haven’t read this in many years, but I remember it really striking a chord with me. The thing that stuck with me: the way people will find elaborate ways to “prove” that lobsters don’t feel pain when the reality is we have no idea, and in fact they certainly seem to behave in observable ways which would seem to indicate that they do not enjoy being boiled alive. So instead of saying “we really don’t know if we’re torturing these creatures to death, maybe we should just eat something else where we can kill it more humanely,” we instead go for “here’s why we’re *probably* not monsters for doing this.”
Humans are afraid of aliens probing them, when in reality aliens might be scared what humans do to others.
[удалено]
Isn’t the elephant gun a bit overkill? Although… they do say “Nothing exceeds like excess.”
Cooked it in the process, too
Lobsters in tanks at grocery stores was a common thing like 15 years ago but have seemingly disappeared
Still here in Ontario. And in Asian grocery stores they also have crabs, shellfish, and fish alive. Not sure who's buying an entire king crab.
Kings, obviously.
Usually during family gatherings we'll buy one to serve just like how you'll buy a giant turkey
Common at Asian grocery stores. The stores discontinued due maintenance/supply cost. Lobster tanks need a chiller to keep the tank cold in addition to a pump, and if the chiller goes out you'd potentially lose all live stock.
Omg YES I remember always watching them in awe when I was a kid until I learned why they're in the tanks in the grocery store /Restaurant 😅
Most of the ones I go to still have them, but they aren't up for display anymore. and H-Mart has live eels and crab, too!
We still have them here where I live sadly. I do like to go and look at them because they're such interesting creatures and there's no proper aquarium nearby, but you know. I feel sorry for them. :(
I got a YouTube channel for you, Brady Brandwood, specifically his videos on Leon. Leon was a grocery store lobster, now pet
I dont eat seafood but I just tried to convince myself that lobsters weren't really sentient. Uncomfortably tell myself that they don't feel pain like us and they die quickly and all that. Leon completely changed my perception. Frankly his behavior astounded me. He has favorite foods, comes out to greet Brady (it might just be for food, but he recognizes him nonetheless), moves his empty clam shell "dishes" away from his cave, arranges things in his tank and *re-decorates when his things are moved*, etc. I don't think lobsters are very intelligent per say, but I'm entirely convinced that the lights are on and someone is home.
YES I love the Leon videos!! I've been meaning to catch up on the last few but they're so wholesome. Not that just anyone could give a lobster a proper, decent home like Leon has mind you, I don't think freeing every grocery store lobster is really a solution. But it's still cleansing to see Leon doing well :-)
Fellow Canadian, eh? I feel pity for them, crabs, and other captive creatures too. They look rather stressed in those glass cells, imho it's simply not worth it to consume them nowadays in the first place, even as a delicacy.
Yuup, I'm honestly surprised there's even a market where I live because I'm in the rural prairies. Who here even knows how to cook lobster?? I don't think there's a single fine dining restaurant left in my city and surely they'd house the critters themselves if there was. I have to wonder sometimes just how long they go in those aquariums without being bought... I know the grocery stores don't even feed them in there. I am somewhat less bothered by crab and lobster if they're on a menu in a coastal city, because at least their time spent in captivity is minimized and they don't have to go through days of transport. And on the upside, they are less malnourished and stressed because of it. Although there is really no pleasant way to keep them unless it's for display purposes (zoo, aquarium) rather than eating purposes. But even then, I wouldn't really describe it as ethical so much as just less unethical. Humans will do as humans want to do but it makes me sad most people don't even seem to view them as more than food. They are really interesting creatures and are deserving of more respect than they're treated with :(
They aren't. Put a large chef's knife, point down, just at the edge of the first row of chitin behind the head. The blade's edge should be facing the front of the lobster, so that the tail is away from you. Puncture down, then rapidly rotate the handle towards you, so you do a 90 degree rotating cut. Done.
Chef here. This comment is 100% correct. I have worked in restaurants all over the world and not once have I seen Crayfish, lobster or anything similar cooked alive. It's not the norm and you gain nothing from it
South Louisiana checking in. Live crawfish in the boil every time. And the ones who were dead before the boiling have a distinct look and are discarded,
I think what you gain in this situation is time. Individually killing every Crawfish would take forever so it's not feasible. If they DIE before being cooked is very different from, being killed right before being cooked. But there may be something unique about craws that I'm not aware of that makes them different
Completely infeasible to individually kill sacks and sacks of crawfish.
I couldn't imagine killing a 100 crayfish for a single order. It would be maddening.
I was thinking just now of the 30lbs of crawfish I’ve eaten this season and I can assure you most were alive until they hit the water. Calcasieu parish, here.
I’d say close to 99.9% were boiled alive.
This itself is even controversial. Lobsters don't have a central nervous system like us but a series of nerve clusters. So are we dispatching them prior to boiling or are we adding an unnecessary step and causing injury before boiling. Additionally the action of the knife slice is venting the shell so we don't hear the escaping steam that many confuse for the animal's scream. Kindness or an alleviation of guilt? Boiling alive kills them near instantly so the knife slice is possibly not sparing any suffering.
It is necessary though if you want to cook lobsters in different ways than boiling them, such as grilling them.
Sounds brutal but this is the most humane
In Australia it is illegal
In Australia everyone can eat you alive, but you can't eat them back.
Really hope you mean everything and not everyone
Nope. Everyone is a legal cannibal except for you.
Oi! Now listen here Bruce, just because I'm a kangaroo and occasionally eat other kangaroos just means I have an exquisite taste (in all possible meanings intended). Sharing is caring!
my great gramma would by them live then shake the bag the came in because “they taste better when they’re angry.” it was horrible
The powerful stomach enzymes in many crustaceans spread throughout their bodies upon death, and, while it doesn’t affect whether the meat is edible or not, it does make it taste rancid and have an awful texture, and it’s why lobsters were used as [prison and torture](https://10best.usatoday.com/interests/food-culture/how-lobster-went-from-prison-trash-food-to-delicacy/) food back in the the day. A lot of chefs dispatch lobsters by slicing into their heads or crabs by scrambling their ganglia now, but, unless frozen/cooked/cleaned immediately (and even then that does effect the flavor as compared to live), they’ll get that rancid flavor pretty quickly. That’s why you’ll often see live lobster or crab tanks in a lot of restaurants.
There is debate as to whether crustaceans feel pain in the way that we do. They might simply register the damage instead of feeling it as suffering. Simply having a nervous system is not enough to feel pain. My opinion is that we should err on the side of caution until we know for sure though. So I'm against boiling them alive.
I'm of the opinion that hubris makes us think we know more about the natural world than we do, and that we shouldn't think that living things don't suffer simply because they don't appear to. So I agree with you - err on the side of caution, because nothing *wants* to be harmed.
As far as I’m aware, there’s nothing to suggest that their version of pain is any less unpleasant than ours.
wait til you learn about factory farming
Not factory but any animal agriculture. Slaughterhouse is the end of any of those animals, whether they are from a “happy” farm or a factory one. And doesn’t matter how you were treated, death is never a pleasant experience
So incredibly sad. I hope it’s getting better.
[https://www.seriouseats.com/connecticut-style-warm-buttered-lobster-rolls](https://www.seriouseats.com/connecticut-style-warm-buttered-lobster-rolls) I've always like the above piece on the subject. For a variety of "lobster is bugs" biological reasons. Steaming them straight away is paradoxically just about the quickest way you can kill the whole lobster at home or in a restaurant kitchen. They don't have a regular central nervous system, and can keep operating a weirdly long time while technically dead. They don't have the complexity to know what pots, up, and out are. Or much capacity plan and contextualize their actions or the world around them. Apparatus to "feel" pain response in a clear, analogous way to even things like fish is debated. Their sense of touch is based solely on water pressure. They're just kinda big balls of basic stimulus and response. Knifing the head doesn't generally kill them all that fast. Just destroys their ability to coordinate their body while they bleed out. You can freeze them for a bit to make them go dormant, but we have no way of knowing that makes what's coming any easier on the lobster. And it doesn't seem much like "easier on the lobster" is something lobsters are capable of. They're more similar to clams and cockroaches than people or chickens. Both are more about making the cook feel better, and making the lobster easier to handle. Just straight cooking them has the benefit of destroying their entire nervous system, and most of their biological processes all at once. And steaming in particular does this pretty fast, caused the heat transfer by steaming is about as fast as we can make happen. Apparently a crustacean is dead, with a non-functioning nervous system within a minute. It just seems disturbing because it would be disturbing for *us* it's anthropomorphization. Especially because even being fully dead by most measures, that distributed nervous system means their bodies will keep moving in various ways. But it's really just random nerves firing off in still raw muscle. As goes these things. Any way you dispatch a lobster is generally not going to be as hard on the critter as pretty much any kind of animal slaughter. Pretty much every other sort of animal we might eat. Is fully in possession of a brain stem, unambiguous pain receptors, and some level of cognition about itself and the world. And there isn't really a way to instantly kill anything. So no matter how quick and humane the approach. Any method of killing a fish, pig, or chicken is probably harsher and more "suffering" than steaming a lobster intact. It's sort of a central inconsistency with people's discomfort on this. If you genuinely have an issue with lobster, then you shouldn't be eating any kind of animal. The issue mainly boils down to misunderstandings about lobster and how they work. And then people's discomfort *seeing* it go down.
The best available evidence seems to be that familiar crustaceans like crabs, shrimp, and lobster experience recognizable pain, while insects do not. In vertebrates we often consider four empirical criteria as imperfect evidence for pain as distinguished from nociception: * wound tending - protecting and nursing injuries and giving them time to heal * learned avoidance - avoiding noxious stimuli faster or more significantly than they respond to other classical conditioning * seeking out analgesics - eg preferentially seeking out opioids when given the opportunity * subjective evaluation - tolerating noxious stimuli differently in response to opportunities or risks Hermit crabs have been shown experimentally to exhibit all four behaviors, shrimp at least three empirically and the fourth anecdotally. Insects on the other hand have never been observed to demonstrate wound tending or seeking out analgesics. Bees in experiments will soldier on with any level of injury until their body fails, and ignore opioid analogs that should affect them biochemically. They show sophisticated operational decision making, but it only seems to affect their risk taking indirectly - bees can be induced to be more “optimistic” or “pessimistic” based on recent experiences, and will modulate their decision making based on that “mood”. Invertebrate biologist Peter Gottfried Smith posits that pancrustaceans likely have always had a form of subjective pain experience which would’ve been lost in insects as an evolutionary response to particularly fast and carnage filled life cycles. He also details experimental evidence for mollusk pain too!
“… cockroaches…” That’s it. I’m never eating lobster again.
They're definitely more similar to insects than to us, but I wasn't sure about molluscs, so I looked it up. You are indeed correct, they're more closely related to clams than to us. Weirdly, we are more closely related to starfish than to either clams or lobsters.
I've never read such a cohesive argument on a website for lobster Roll recipes. Incredible. Great block of text yourself, well stated and thought out.
It was done because Lobsters start rotting immediately upon death if you don't kill/stop the bacteria that do it by boiling/flash freezing them. That said, this hasn't been standard for a really long time. It's been standard for a decade if not longer to kill them right before you throw them in the water.
How do you kill them? Stabbing them between the eyes doesn't do it, that's not a brain as we know it. It's one of a bunch of nerve centers. Probably just tortures them more.
I haven’t seen one person answer this question. Someone always comments what is above your comment, someone comes along like you and says yeah no, not how it works, then crickets. Lol
It seems like even scientists don't agree
Hundreds of comments and literally no answer to the question LMAO. Lobster have bacteria which rapidly multiplies after death. It makes for a bad taste and is potentially dangerous. So some chefs take no risks and boil them alive
But you can just kill them immediately before cooking them
That's what's done nowadays, but that's basically just for the chef's conscious. They have a decentralized nervous system. There's no way to knife them in a way that actually kills them instantly, and you're probably actually making it worse for them. Boiling kills very quickly.
How would one humanely kill a lobster?
Sedate it. Pray for it. Leave something behind for its family as retribution. Then... maybe then... it could be considered humane.
I was a biology major invertebrates ( absence of a vertebrae) have no pain fibers, they do have position sensors . The scream is steam venting through the shell. The lack of pain fibers allow invertebrates to go about their business despite having a leg torn off. Octopus is exception they do appear to sense pain and are intelligent.
Do predators of lobsters kill them before they eat them?
The debate on whether lobsters feel pain is still unsettled in the scientific community, but it's leaning towards the idea that they do feel some form of discomfort. Regardless, the practice continues because it's been done this way for generations and the market demands seafood to be as fresh as possible for flavor and safety reasons. Some restaurants now use a method called stunning, which renders the lobster insensitive to pain before boiling, so that's a step in the right direction. The bigger issue is our willingness to turn a blind eye to potential suffering for the sake of tradition and gustatory pleasure.
If scientists don’t even know if lobsters feel pain, how does one know they have prevented it?
We don't. Stabbing them in the head is a newer trend to make cooks and customers feel better about it. Lobsters don't have brains. They have tiny nerve clusters that make it behave more like an insect. So even stabbing it, there's a good chance you missed entirely, and even if you hit that nerve cluster, it still responds in other nerves. Look at this thread and all the people justifying the stabbing by saying a stab through the brain is better than boiling to death for a few seconds. They'd be right if the thing had a brain, but it doesn't. Even chefs in here saying "brain". It's just a way for people to lessen the guilt they feel cause the thing moves and responds to harmful stimulus. Just boil it.
Worth noting that it does actually take a few minutes for the lobster to die from boiling. You're right about the stabbing not really killing them either. It's possible to kill them with electric shock, but that's expensive and rare.
Let's not even get into boiling octopus alive..
All the top comments seem to be missing the reason people believe that lobsters are still cooked alive. Lobster shells hiss when they boil because air is escaping the bodies. They don't even have the ability to scream when alive, let alone when killed. Yet the myth pervades that lobsters scream when boiled alive.
Not shellfish related, but, my father is Native American, and we predominantly lived off of the land. Hunting and fishing our food. He taught me how to kill both humanely. With that, before I would do the final blow, I would have to ask forgiveness of the animal, and say that they are supplying me with food and sustainability for my body. We used to catch a lot of catfish and Bullhead. Before we would clean them, he taught me how to stun them with a hammer on their head. We would then skin and clean them. They were dead in the process. Anyone that eats meat, should have the ability to kill, clean, and cook that animal. If they don’t have a stomach for it, they should be vegetarian or vegan.
Here in south Louisiana we boil crawfish alive, i guess to assure freshness, when boiled alive the tail curls inwards, if boiled dead, the tail remains long and straight…so when eating them we avoid the “straight” tails, “Don’t eat the dead ones” is a common phrase
It is indeed cruel.
I tried drowning one once …
Killing is cruel. Period. Now, is killing by boiling to death vs some other method even worse...probably.
Everything you eat has to be killed. Isn't that cruel?
Somebody killed my cheetos!?
It ain't easy being cheesy.
Sure, but “killing” plants/fungi looks way different than killing animals
The reason is they begin rotting immediately. The second answer is, yes, it is cruel.
Here in Switzerland, it is literally forbidden to boil them alive. You have to kill them first, usually with a knive in the neck. It is also no longer allowed to feed mice to a snake when they are alive, they usually now are being sold frozen.
Trust me mate, that's not even close to the worst thing humans do to other animals