Photo by Simon Goldenberg/Flickr CC
Americans worried about European-style big government have something new to fear: the police arresting you for cooking. In particular, cooking crabs and lobsters. Seriously.
In March of this year, a scientific team in the UK released a report indicating, through the use of some novel experiments, that crabs may well feel pain. The study overturned decades of claims that crustaceans can't feel much at all, and garnered worldwide attention. Now, in this week's edition of New Scientist, a researcher in the UK named Peter Fraser, who uses crabs in his experiments, has fought back, writing that crabs feeling pain is about as likely as crabs being able to enjoy a good opera.
So the debate continues, except that, astonishingly, Mr. Fraser may turn out to be on the wrong side. I wouldn't be surprised if there are chefs out there who play opera for their lobsters to ease their final moments. And I can tell you for certain that there is a small army of animal-rights activists in Europe lobbying for new laws for crabs, lobsters, crayfish, and other invertebrates. The idea is to give these charming underwater bugs the same legal protections against cruelty already afforded to pigs, cows, and other mammals. Which, for starters, would mean not boiling them alive.
With or without a law, it would actually make perfect sense to try to minimize the suffering of crustaceans when we prepare them for cooking.If this sounds crazy, consider the fact that New Zealand has already included crustaceans in its animal protection laws, and that in 2005, the Italian town of Reggio Emilia banned the boiling of lobsters. That same year, the Scottish group Advocates for Animals released a convincing report arguing that invertebrates possess much of the neural circuitry to process pain. A UK group called the Shellfish Network has been a tireless proponent of crustacean rights, and given the mounting evidence and changing attitudes, European parliaments seem at least willing to consider such laws at the national level. The crab report this March has provided additional ammunition. People like Mr. Fraser are nervous.
If Europe does eventually adopt crustacean-rights legislation, the US will have a hard time avoiding the issue. So what's a cook to do -- prepare for a future of boiling lobsters and crabs in the utmost secrecy, with the doors locked and the shades drawn? For most people, dispatching live animals in the kitchen is traumatic enough as it is, without the fear of landing in jail.
But therein lies the crux of the matter. After all, we are killing animals to eat them. Those pigs, cows, and other mammals who already have legal protections are also getting killed to eat, and the laws, however imperfect, are there simply to reduce unnecessary suffering in the process. Even with further advances in science, we may never know precisely what crustaceans feel. But it doesn't take much of a leap to imagine that being boiled alive isn't pleasant, and that's exactly why we're squeamish. In a way, it's strange that our basic laws against animal cruelty don't already include crustaceans.
It seems to me that rather than fan the flames of this debate, we could easily just sidestep it. With or without a law, it would actually make perfect sense, and would be entirely in line with our treatment of other creatures, to try to minimize the suffering of crabs, lobsters, crayfish, and other such critters when we prepare them for cooking. No gourmand need oppose such a thing in principle.
The only question is, what are our options? In the UK, scientists predicting changes to the law have made news with a quirky device that kills crustaceans humanely with a quick and overwhelming electric shock; to my mind, the inventors of this machine deserve an award for coming up with the name alone: the Crustastun. There is a high-capacity industrial version and a countertop model. As much as I would relish outfitting my counter with a shiny silver lobster zapper--garnering me prestige that no Kitchen Aid appliance could equal--I haven't the space between the toaster, blender, and coffee maker. Nor could most home cooks afford to buy one; reports put the cost somewhere north of a thousand dollars.
Another, even newer option is to buy our lobster the same way we now buy just about every other type of meat we eat--as faceless pieces of flesh in a package. Technological advances in the form of massive industrial pumping chambers--called hydrostatic pressure processors--have recently allowed lobsters to be crushed to death quickly in big batches, at the same time separating their meat from the shells without having to cook it. But questions remain as to whether this method dispatches the animals speedily enough to be considered humane.
My preference is for the old-fashioned way, which, like the Crustastun, is humane-approved. Before boiling, I place the crab or lobster in the freezer for 15 or 20 minutes to slow its metabolism and dull its senses, then flip it over and split the main body section of the animal in half with the swift stroke of a large kitchen knife.
There are days when doing this makes me want to be a vegetarian. But then I think, if I'm going to eat meat, it's better to be clear-eyed about it. Bring on the law, then; let's honor the last living creatures in our kitchens, and kill them with respect ourselves. While we still can.
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Okay, so I grew up on the coast of Maine and held several positions within the lobster fishing industry, including serving as kitchen help in a seafood restaurant. I can recall the head chef only wanting tails for his main dish, so I was asked to wring tail from body while said lobster specimen still wiggled with life. I recollect watching the two halves writhe in separate plastic containers with more than a little remorse. The purpose of this was to have fresh tails to cook to order, instead of cooking the lobster at once and having to reheat the meat.
Obviously, this was a medieval practice at best. Yet, I have to admit while reading your article I was struck by the inadequacy of the humane methods suggested. Instead of my former employer's method (the draw and quarter) and the traditional boiling alive, we can now look forward to the electric lobster chair, industrial crushing to death, or freezing almost to extinction followed by a quick, clean, evisceration.
If we're talking about killing humanely (humanistically?), I don't believe we're really going to find a method that suffices. If killing "bugs" (Downeast Maine parlance for lobsters) becomes too fraught with personifications of human characteristics, then a good, safe, abstinence from boiled lobster, lobster rolls, (lobster carpaccio anyone?), may be in order.
(If so, please send federal aid to coastal Maine towns in search of new industry).
If you consider that a Lobster feels pain by heat, wouldn't the same apply to freezing/hypothermia? Would the guillotine be any more humane if we put people into freezers first?
If humanity is a consideration, then I think the best method is the swiftest. Skip the freezer and be quick with your knife.
I should have mentioned that chilling the lobster in the freezer for a short while is a technique specifically suggested by animal welfare experts and it seems to be effective because lobsters are cold-blooded. According to a report by Dr. Neville Gregory, formerly of the Animal Welfare and Stress department of the New Zealand Ministry of Agriculture and Forestry, "Being cold blooded, chilling the lobster helps reduce nerve function and metabolic activity. When it is fully chilled, the lobster will stop moving and no longer responds to being handled. After chilling a lobster, split it along its length where it has two chains of nerve ganglia, with interconnecting nerves along its body under the shell. ... Chilling beforehand prevents the lobster from moving which avoids mistakes during splitting -- otherwise it is hard to achieve a humane kill in an unchilled animal." But it's true that, just as with heat, we don't know exactly what they feel. Perhaps science will bring further revelations.
Wow. This discussion is stomach-churning. BLECH @ comment #1!!! And from the depths of my nausea, I say without smugness that I am glad I'm a vegetarian. I just don't have the nerve to be otherwise.
I have to agree with your conclusion: if you are going to eat meat, it's only fair that you should be able to handle what that means. Which is a big deal in my humble opinion. Killing something, stripping it down to flesh/fat/bone/offal... and being able to do all that, crucially, without the reflection that you yourself are made of similar structures.
Kekemen, I couldn't agree more -- it is a big deal. At some point I'll have to blog about the time I slaughtered and cleaned a goat. It made me reflect a lot about what was going on, and ever since then I've chosen my rare occasions to eat mammal meat with extreme care.
It's always been very interesting to me that people get so upset, disproportionately in my opinion, about lobster cooking if they don't also get upset about eating a hamburger, considering the problems of the meatpacking industry, and that cows are much closer to humans than any crustacean. The reason, obvious I think, is that we see the lobster in our kitchens, whereas the beef processing takes place out of sight.
Indeed, that's why, in my old-fashioned way, I lament the arrival of new technologies for mass-producing packaged lobster meat. Sure, it won't be as "BLECH" any more -- to borrow your apt term -- but we lose that last bit of awareness of what's really going on.
I have to agree. This debate brings up more to me than the simple lobster-pain problem - as you said, the whole meatpacking industry yields neat little pieces that completely remove the consumer from the visceral experience of knowing what it means to kill and eat something. It's like a moral sanitization of the process, but in that it only takes away the instigation to even think about it - being removed from the feelings, concerns, and questions that always come from such an experience, or the strength of having to repeat it.
What's sad is that the act of buying meat then becomes, to my mind, an act of moral recklessness. The consumer takes it at face value, an abstracted piece of flesh, devoid of the requisite reciprocity that comes from the killing of an animal. There is no recognition of what is given, no thanks rendered, no understanding gained, and no human growth beyond the physical. What's happening is that those actions and events that once helped mark the maturation of a child to an adult, and the adult's relationship to the world around them, are completely lost from the majority of our lives. If that's old-fashioned, count me in.
And it's not even like it's some kind of enlightenment. Just the inner awareness and imagery of, "Damn. I took its life, and now I'm eating of it." And you're right about the people who squeal about lobsters but don't hesitate to grab a burger. That kind of selective thinking just obfuscates the whole issue.
What I mean to say is - you should absolutely, absolutely blog about your slaughtering experience!
I think David Foster Wallace put it best:
from "Consider the Lobster"
link:
http://www.gourmet.com/magazine/2000s/2004/08/consider_the_lobster
"Given the (possible) moral status and (very possible) physical suffering of the animals involved, what ethical convictions do gourmets evolve that allow them not just to eat but to savor and enjoy flesh-based viands (since of course refined enjoyment, rather than just ingestion, is the whole point of gastronomy)? And for those gourmets who’ll have no truck with convictions or rationales and who regard stuff like the previous paragraph as just so much pointless navel-gazing, what makes it feel okay, inside, to dismiss the whole issue out of hand? That is, is their refusal to think about any of this the product of actual thought, or is it just that they don’t want to think about it? Do they ever think about their reluctance to think about it? After all, isn’t being extra aware and attentive and thoughtful about one’s food and its overall context part of what distinguishes a real gourmet? Or is all the gourmet’s extra attention and sensibility just supposed to be aesthetic, gustatory?
I hate to say it, K2L, but I never much cared for that David Foster Wallace piece on lobsters. I know this won't be a popular opinion, and for me to voice it with his tragic death still so recent in our memories may seem sacrosanct, but I have to voice it nonetheless. (I voiced it plenty before he died, too.)
Having worked for a couple of years as a full-time commercial lobsterman in Maine myself, I found Wallace's attitude toward the working-class fishing culture of the Maine coast to be opportunistic and condescending. He got some important facts wrong about the fishery, and to me it seemed he was so uncurious about the people he was writing about that he either ignored or was ignorant of the fact that Maine lobstermen represent one of the least exploitative and most sustainable fishing operations in the world, and that they have made a lot of wise and thoughtful decisions about how best to harvest the critters they catch. If he'd raised his moral concerns about the animals in that context I would have been more sympathetic.
Instead, his moralizing felt to me like a publicity stunt. If he was going to write an article as a publicity stunt, why not attack the pork industry or something, where the suffering of those much more sentient creatures seems to me a greater tragedy?
Naturally, I'd prefer people read my fascinating article on the lobster fishery, published two years before Wallace's, right here in the Atlantic! It was that article that became the basis for my book, The Secret Life of Lobsters.
K2L - that's funny, I was just going to pop off with the DFW piece, but there you are. TC, I haven't read your book but now I really want to.
I recently wrote this piece about being vegetarian, which addresses is exactly the issue you brought up. If doing something raises such a visceral sense of ethical discomfort, why again would we make ourselves do it?
Michael-
I don't think it raises an ethical discomfort. It's part of brain wiring to conflate things. Seeing a gruesome injury of any kind makes people queasy if they're not used to it, because some part of them thinks, "that would be awful to happen to me. It's why no one (except psychos) likes to gouge the eyes out of photographs. You know it's not a person, it's a photo. There is no harm done at all, no ethical issue, but you feel icky doing it.
Also, once you do anything like killing lobsters or cleaning fish on a regular basis, you feel less uncomfortable. Not less aware of the killing, just less queasy.
I really think all of the "ethical" choices we make are part of a continuum of what we're willing and able to be continually aware of. Jains sweep the ground in front of them to avoid stepping on bugs, but have no issues at all with pesticide-raised produce. I personally think the sweeping is silly, but not because of the pesticide inconsistency. Everyone's personal dividing lines are forced by reality to be arbitrary, so I prefer (as you seem to) keeping those choices personal.
Can a decapod's CNS process pain in a way that is remotely as complex, nuanced, and subjective as a primate or cetacean? Even if Elwood's hermit crabs "remembered" the electric shocks that had been administered, what is this "memory," exactly?
It seems to me that cruelty inflicted upon a primate or a cetacean is far worse for those organisms than cruelty inflicted upon a decapod, because the latter cannot make much of the experience beyond the basics of 'ouch' and 'avoid.' A human who is tortured by Cheney-esque "no marks" types of torture might be haunted for life and emotionally damaged beyond repair; a human that is put through a slow and agonizing death has minutes or hours to process their experience way beyond the basics of 'ouch' and 'avoid.' I don't see how shocking a hermit crab or boiling a lobster can be likened to torturing a human or letting someone slowly die from blood loss or infection from a gunshot wound to the gut.
The comparison only becomes valid when we consider how these acts impact the people who are wielding the weapons and the people who are witnessing the event. I do think that people should avoid treating animals cruelly, but mostly because it is indeed a slippery slope from frying ants with a magnifying glass to other types of murderous violence. (A long slope, with plenty of ways off, but slippery nonetheless.) In other words, I think it's good for Trevor that he treats the soon-to-be-eaten lobster as well as possible under the inevitably murderous circumstances, but mainly for Trevor's sake, not the lobster's.
Another odd thing about the concern for lobsters is the tradition of buying and then freeing very large lobsters. What is this about, exactly? And why do people tend to feel more sorry for the young of other species, rather than the old, whereas in this case the old (er, rather, large... they aren't necessarily old) are revered. Strange.
tinisoli, an interesting footnote to your last paragraph is that the lobstermen of Maine have always had a special place in their hearts for the really big lobsters, and always throw them back -- indeed, in Maine they're legally required to -- because these big old-timers are an important part of the broodstock that keeps on mating and making lobster babies. It's only in other states in southern New England that fishermen keep and sell the big ones, and it's a terrible shame that they do. Fishermen in Maine have been lobbying for decades for a federal law that would protect all large lobsters from harvest.
While I recognize the necessity of a diminished pain animal execution, I truly feel that we are missing the forest for the trees. In purely Darwinistic terms, we are at the top of the food chain. That said, because we are sentient beings, I feel we have a moral obligation to reduce pain in any situation where death is inevitable.
We are truly splitting hairs here. I agree with the substance of the aforementioned post that elucidated how all death is unpleasant yet, is the way of life.
I am not condoning the ruthless torture of animals. But, in the cases of feeding ourselves, wasting money on finding more "humane" killing methods for invertebrates seems utterly ridiculous.