In Switzerland, it's now illegal to boil a live lobster • Hacker News Board

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

#11

Post by blweiner » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #6

fmihaila wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article talks about "animal dignity", but how is that giving them any form of dignity? They are still being killed unnaturally. The point is to minimize unnecessary suffering. If you have to kill it, don't prolong it.

Yes but dignity is usually related to respect and honor. When was the last time you killed and ate something out of respect? They should change that phrase to "reduce cruelty towards animals" and then it's fine. Say it as it is basically.

I've been struggling with this recently as well. I don't need to kill animals in order to survive and so doing so is just for my pleasure. It's surprisingly easy to put this out of your mind when you're sitting down to a nice dinner, but I do doubt that I'd be able to kill animals if I needed to do it with my own hands. Yet I and most others decide all the time that ending the life of another animal can be justified by the pleasure we'll receive from it when we choose to eat meat. So yeah, I'm also having trouble coming to terms with caring enough to reduce some suffering but still being OK with taking a life.

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

#12

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

fmihaila wrote: post #3

nickjj wrote: post #2

"...dipping it into salt water and then thrusting a knife into its brain." So for a few seconds it will think it's being released back into its natural habitat and then seconds later its brains are dripping down some chef's knife. The article talks about "animal dignity", but how is that giving them any form of dignity? They are still being killed unnaturally. NOTE: I'm not some animal rights person and I do eat meat…

> The article talks about "animal dignity", but how is that giving them any form of dignity? They are still being killed unnaturally. The point is to minimize unnecessary suffering. If you have to kill it, don't prolong it.

[deleted]

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

#13

Post by derefr » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:07 PM UTC

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…

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?

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

#14

Post by azernik » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #2

"...dipping it into salt water and then thrusting a knife into its brain." So for a few seconds it will think it's being released back into its natural habitat and then seconds later its brains are dripping down some chef's knife. The article talks about "animal dignity", but how is that giving them any form of dignity? They are still being killed unnaturally. NOTE: I'm not some animal rights person and I do eat meat…

There are gradations of "dignity" - your formulation would demand vegetarianism, since all animals being killed for food are killed "unnaturally". Whereas I think there's a great deal more respect involved in reducing the animal's suffering (quick killing during a period of reduced stress).

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

#15

Post by leeoniya » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #13

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…

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?

if i remember correctly it has something to do with the nervous system being less central and more distributed. probably similar to limbs that continue to move once severed (in other species)

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

#16

Post by tptacek » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

derefr wrote: post #13

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…

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 writer of mine, has a solution to this problem: clove oil anesthetizes lobsters (and fish). Clove oil, knife through the head, then boil.

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

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

#17

Post by derefr » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:14 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #6

fmihaila wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article talks about "animal dignity", but how is that giving them any form of dignity? They are still being killed unnaturally. The point is to minimize unnecessary suffering. If you have to kill it, don't prolong it.

Yes but dignity is usually related to respect and honor. When was the last time you killed and ate something out of respect? They should change that phrase to "reduce cruelty towards animals" and then it's fine. Say it as it is basically.

> When was the last time you killed and ate something out of respect?

Some indigenous American cultures do make sure to eat the things they've killed, out of respect. You could call that "animal dignity." (You could also consider it a superstitious belief that the animal's spirit will get after them if they disrespect its gifts.)

I also know that in many cultures (at least in previous eras†), if you killed the parents of a family (human or animal), it was seen as correct to kill their babies (i.e. children not yet of an age to fend for themselves) as well, to prevent them from just later succumbing to starvation or predation. That's a form of "animal dignity."

† This mostly came up for human babies in the context of soldiers from an army-on-the-march razing foreign villages. If these villages worshipped a different faith, the whole village would go. But if they worshipped the same faith as the attacking army, the army would likely refuse to burn down the temple of the faith they believed in—and so, rather than kill "innocents", they'd dump them into the hands of the priest of that temple. This was the de-facto invention of the orphanage. Later, orphanages would become formalized as an institution, and spread to the point that soldiers would just assume foreign cultures to have them as well, and so the killing-innocents part of razing villages generally stopped.

(And recently in Western culture, we've invented the equivalent of orphanages for animals as well: wildlife rescue habitats.)

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

#18

Post by jjeaff » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:15 PM UTC

watwut wrote: post #5

nickjj wrote: post #2

"...dipping it into salt water and then thrusting a knife into its brain." So for a few seconds it will think it's being released back into its natural habitat and then seconds later its brains are dripping down some chef's knife. The article talks about "animal dignity", but how is that giving them any form of dignity? They are still being killed unnaturally. NOTE: I'm not some animal rights person and I do eat meat…

Natural death of an animal in the nature can be quite long and very painful. The point is not to simulate natural kill, the point is to kill the animal without torturing it unnecessary.

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.

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

#19

Post by miles » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:23 PM UTC

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…

> 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 meat, he participates in taking animal life merely for the sake of his appetite. And to act so is immoral."

[1] https://books.google.com/books?id=iucmAQAAIAAJ&pg=PA43

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

#20

Post by alkonaut » Sat, Feb 17, 2018, 9:25 PM UTC

nickjj wrote: post #6

fmihaila wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The article talks about "animal dignity", but how is that giving them any form of dignity? They are still being killed unnaturally. The point is to minimize unnecessary suffering. If you have to kill it, don't prolong it.

Yes but dignity is usually related to respect and honor. When was the last time you killed and ate something out of respect? They should change that phrase to "reduce cruelty towards animals" and then it's fine. Say it as it is basically.

Who said something about “out of respect”? that makes no sense.

I try to kill anything I’m going to it with dignity and respect. Not out of respect.

And the least I can do to that end is to not kill anything I’m not going to eat, and if I kill anything I make it as quick and painless as possible.