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In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

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Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#91

Post by StavrosK »

tptacek wrote: post #16
derefr wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm desperately holding myself back from getting distracted from work with a deep dive through crustacean nervous system anatomy here, so I'll just ask: in what way are they different?

Having to do with the fact that lobsters (according to Wallace) have decentralized nervous systems consisting of ganglia wired in series, so that slicing through one of them might not disable the creature's nociception upon being immersed in boiling water. You might just be keeping it from flailing around, paralyzed but still "aware" in whatever sense a lobster is aware of anything. Dave Arnold, another favorite writ…

> (Myself, I'm kind of grossed out by shellfish).

Ah, and I thought I was the only one. They look too damn similar to cockroaches!

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#92

Post by mod »

nefitty wrote: post #76
shrimp_emoji wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree because they're not smart enough to enjoy their short and simple lives, so the enjoyment our lives get via eating them takes precedence. This is a very fascist position, though! I could say the same for a human on life support who's gone through brain death (really, a lobster's smarter, at that point). Although perhaps that's not really that bad, albeit macabre. Perhaps, one day, we'll lab-grow meat, maybe…

If we could genetically engineer animals to be intelligent enough to have conscious desires, and also have an overwhelming desire to be killed and eaten, would it still be morally wrong to eat them? (This dilemma assumes that you share my belief that the demand for meat products causes a net increase in suffering.)

We're probably off-topic by now, but do you also believe that demand for meat products causes a net increase in joy/enjoyment (whatever you call the opposite of suffering)?

For instance, I keep chickens and let them free-pasture until the day I butcher them. I think they enjoy their time out there as much as any animal would. Depending who or what you believe, the end is very quick for them, so the suffering is minimal.

I realize this isn't the norm, though. I'm sure the "joy" experienced on many factory farms is some kind of dystopian thing, like being happy you got extra gruel last Tuesday.

But it doesn't have to be that way. Just something to think about.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#93

Post by [deleted] »

PeterisP wrote: post #42
lukaslalinsky wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a dangerous route to take, because at that point you can start comparing yourself to animals. We spent a few centuries developing our world, so I think it's fair to assume higher standards. Animals kill other animals to solve their hunger and they do their best to end it quickly.

"Animals kill other animals to solve their hunger and they do their best to end it quickly." is not entirely true. Many animals will start to eat others without bothering to kill them; non-carnivorous birds will peck each other (not particularly quickly) to death, dolphins do gang rape for fun while having the ability to understand what it means, they also kill things like porpoises for fun (they can't eat porpoises…

[deleted]

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#94

Post by mod »

chr1 wrote: post #41
tptacek wrote: post #4

It's at this point you'd probably want to go read David Foster Wallace's essay "Consider The Lobster", an assignment he took from (I shit you not) Gourmet Magazine, which begins with a sort of Illinois Country Fair style travelogue from the Maine Lobster Festival and "ends", if you can call the back 2/3rds of an essay "ending", in a discussion of the meaning of pain and its applicability to the specific nervous syste…

What is worse, causing pain or killing? If we consider an extreme case of someone going through a horrible torture, but the next day waking up as healthy as before, and without some kind of mental illness, and without losing significant amount of his time, or opportunity, would it be any different than a game? Would most people try such a game, where they play for someone getting executed in middle ages? My guess is…

I absolutely, 100% would not volunteer to go through a "horrible torture."

I certainly wouldn't do it for "a game." I don't think I would do it for any amount of money or other benefit, either. What you're proposing is (seemingly) no benefit beyond the experience of being tortured--which coincidentally you are going you erase when you delete the mental illness.

Anyway, you're wrong, nobody would sign up for that. People who are afraid of roller coasters don't ride them. Everyone's afraid of torture.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#95

Post by travisjungroth »

nezzle wrote: post #83
miles wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Dave Arnold, another favorite writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil. Or, you know, don’t kill them. Not sure why this idea is still considered extreme. Why harm fellow creatures when it is simply unnecessary? As Tolstoy wrote[1], "A man can live and be healthy without killing animals for food; therefore, if he eats me…

We clearly eat far more meat than we need and produce/harvest meat in ways that create unnecessary damage and suffering. However, not everyone is like you. Some people develop deficiencies when they exclude meat from their diet. I have witnessed an ex-vegan health/nutritional professional advise a vegetarian to start eating some meat due to chronic health issues and lab-tested nutritional deficiencies. It was an hard…

Ok, that person couldn't live and be healthy without meat, so the quote doesn't apply to them. Most people can.

> I'm glad it works for you right now while providing a sense of moral superiority, but not everyone is the same.

Come on.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#96

Post by mod »

dvtv75 wrote: post #44
jjeaff wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, sometimes when I hear people talk about how we kill animals inhumanely, I feel like they should watch a little bit of national geographic. Makes a sketchy slaughterhouse seem like a picnic.

I went on a tour through a slaughterhouse when I was a teen, as part of a school trip. Didn't want to go, but my stepfather decided that it would be "good for" me. I made it clear I didn't want to go and he laughed. He loved the power trip of forcing me to watch animals be killed. It really messed me up. I won't eat red meat mostly as a result of this, but also because my family were also ridiculously poor cooks. (Th…

That seems a lousy way to kill an animal.

I saw a video (which I won't link to you, as I'm certain you don't want to see it) of a phenomenal on-site butcher, he was incredibly precise, fast, etc.

Anyway, the video starts with a live cow, which is killed instantly with a small firearm and a well-placed bullet to the brain.

I butcher animals sometimes (I hunt and have a small homestead) and I would not dream to use any method which involved a death even as slow as bleeding out.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#98

Post by radicalbyte »

miles wrote: post #60
zaroth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fairly difficult not to kill them, you know, when you plan to eat them. If your Tolstoy quote is accurate, it seems fairly sloppy reasoning to me. Animal protein is an essential component of nourishing billions of people. Calling sustenance “appetite” is a rhetorical flourish which undermines the argument. I think what would be immoral is telling billions of people they can’t eat meat. There are many ways one co…

> Animal protein is an essential component of nourishing billions of people It doesn't have to be; in fact, humans, animals, and the planet would be much better off in many ways were we to transition to plant-based diets: Go vegan, save the planet https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/08/opinions/go-vegan-save-the-pl... Five things would happen if everyone stopped eating meat http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/five-things-wou…

I think that in a century people will look back and consider us barbarians for eating meat whilst they chow down on their lab grown "ham"-burgers.

We surely can't be that far off of this now?

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#99

Post by megaman22 »

derefr wrote: post #37
always_good wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how your argument exists alongside the fact that we farm the animals that we eat. The chicken that you buy at the grocer isn't one we swiped away just as a wolf was about it eat it. The chicken was grown indoors in a factory, likely hadn't even seen the light of day. Even a wolf-eaten wild chicken gets that courtesy.

The argument I have is mostly applicable to fisheries (i.e. this discussion re: lobsters); it doesn't have much to say about farming. Lobsters, like much of our seafood, are just plucked up out of the ocean. If we don't eat them, an otter or something does.

Lobsters are basically farmed, at this point.

Re: In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster

#100

Post by itdaniher »

miles wrote: post #60
zaroth wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s fairly difficult not to kill them, you know, when you plan to eat them. If your Tolstoy quote is accurate, it seems fairly sloppy reasoning to me. Animal protein is an essential component of nourishing billions of people. Calling sustenance “appetite” is a rhetorical flourish which undermines the argument. I think what would be immoral is telling billions of people they can’t eat meat. There are many ways one co…

> Animal protein is an essential component of nourishing billions of people It doesn't have to be; in fact, humans, animals, and the planet would be much better off in many ways were we to transition to plant-based diets: Go vegan, save the planet https://www.cnn.com/2017/04/08/opinions/go-vegan-save-the-pl... Five things would happen if everyone stopped eating meat http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/five-things-wou…

If the extensively[1] debunked[2] "What the Health" makes your list, I'm skeptical of the standards to which you hold your sources.

Can you provide peer reviewed papers making claims comparable to the sources you provided?

[1] https://www.vox.com/platform/amp/science-and-health/2017/7/2...

[2] http://time.com/4897133/vegan-netflix-what-the-health/

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