It should be quick and humane. Whether it is a cow or a lobster.

Never heard of them being electrocuted in the UK!

True, but what about cowbsters? The self-buttered second cousins to both species I've been trying so hard to create all these years? Who's looking out for them?

Do we have to eat shellfish at all? Do we have to figure out ways to eat everything that is alive?

Meh, its a glorified bug. What next? Bug spray made illegal because it is painful to be poisoned to death?

Ok, no...

This has to stop... You can't reference other species in the animal kingdom with a tag meant for Humans...

There is NOTHING 'HUMAN' about animals and thus treating them "HUMANLY" does not apply. Not that it applies to humans either seeing as we don't kill each other in a 'Humane' manner either, but I digress...

These are animals. Treating an animal in a humane manner is accepting the fact that animals are humans, which they are not! As a human, I expect another human to use the toilet. As a human, I expect a dog to defecate outside. NOT INTERCHANGEABLE.

Humans, afak, no nothing of the respectful interactions between animal species, because we (or at least I) don't see it. I don't see a shark swim by a fish that is near death and lets it go or takes it to a fish hospital so it can get better, no... The shark just goes "CHOMP" deader fish, in its tummy, satisfying...

We don't need laws about animal rights (in the animal kingdom, animals have rights) and seeing as humans are also animals then we should just start calling ourselves that... Animals.

We need conservation laws, people! Population regulation. Through out all species (yes, ma'am humans too!)

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True. Humans do have an ugly side and are horrible to each other. I still believe that we can show mercy and compassion and end a life with more skill and thought than "just an animal". We are supposed to be better than that.

humane (hy-mn)
adj.
1. Characterized by kindness, mercy, or compassion: a humane judge.


We take our animals to the vet to end their lives humanely. What is the difference? ALL animals should be given the same consideration. We, a higher species, are capable of providing that.



I think you can treat another being nicely, without making it human.


I agree. Sometimes there needs to be culls and population control. Even that is conducted humanely. When deer are overpopulated, they send in sharpshooters to head shoot them. It is quicker and less stressful than herding them into a holding corral and picking off moving, frightened animals, don'tcha think?

There are worse, messy ways to dispatch an animal.

We have the knowledge and I believe the responsiblity because we have the knowledge, the gift to do it better than our animal counterparts.

I could be wrong but I think this references our own humanity in how we treat animals. So to say we treat rabbits humanly indicates that we do not treat them as say a fisher cat would and shred the living flesh from their bones leaving the carcass in someone's yard.

I don't think that this is trying to anthropormorphize (sp) the shellfish to have the human quality of humanity but to codify their treatment by humans as not debasing.

I think of shellfish as delicious giant insects. The idea that this type of law is needed I find ridiculous. Will we soon have laws over the proper ways to dispose of house flys?

Speaking as a former vegetarian (15 years off the flesh I was) - I have to say this is silly. It isn't intelligent to process pain other than what one commenter in the article called "ouch" and "avoid". People can anticipate pain, and that is what makes it bad for them - the intelligence to know and understand what it means. Animals are driven by nothing but instinct and cannot anticipate the future...especially something low on the evolutionary scale like a crustacean.

A freaking lobster? Geez, get over it already. Dump it in the water. 60 seconds (or less) later and there is no issue.

Om nom nom and please pass the butter.

I can understand why you are a "former" vegetarian now, Moe. ;)

Bottom line is, where does one draw the line? Just because an animal cannot anticipate the pain (and I have to disagree with you there. Watch animals herded up a ramp to slaughter and hearing the other animals cry out and get back to me on that one. My dogs anticipate pain every time they go to the vet. They shake, they pant, they hate it.) does not mean that they do not actually FEEL the pain on however we chose to dispatch them. They are going to feel pain when they die. Every living being does. But we can make it less and less stressful.

In China, they put cats in boiling water to draw off the fur so they can eat it. And many of them are not dead or senseless to pain.

In Korea, they HANG dogs because the believe that the more the animal suffers in death, the tastier the meat.

We sympathize with them, because to us they mean something. They are pets to us, they are cute.

Things that are not cute are not given the same passions as those that are.

“The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated”

Mahatma Gandhi

Yes.

If you've ever eaten stone crab you would know we must, ;)

How do you get a bull and a lobster to...um...procreate?

You know what...I don't think I want to know

i agree with TraumaMamma in several points.
i think, if we're not sure if a certain animal feels pain, we should avoid doing things that would cause pain to it to be on the safe side. :/

@moe: 15 years vegetarian and then eating meat again? wow.. why did you become veggie in the first place?

When Hanuma's earthly representatives comes to steal my lunch I will ponder this quote while hitting them in the head with a stick.


* This is a fantasy as I can only wish I would be having lunch during intermittent monkey attacks.

You people do know that the more 'Human' you make your food appear the less likely you are to eat it, even if it is the last thing available, meaning that you will die from hunger... and be over populated by your lunch...

I am not going to get into a semantics debate because one is going to end up losing. I see both sides of the argument and I realize the implications of making food more human than it is in a fated attempt to let it live its life.

That is what PETA wants. PETA and all people like them want you to humanize your lunch because it lives so you will stop eating them (which is one of their arguments)

Guess what? Lobster? If you don't boil it ALIVE! it POISONS the meat, making you sick and potentially at death's door. It's the lobster's way of saying:

"f**k YOU! if I am gonna die, I'm taking you with me"

Well, So does rice, and corn. Plants have feelings too. The crunch I make while I am munching on baby carrots? That's them screaming, telling me:

"NOOOOOO, we didn't do d**k! to you... Don't eat us!"

See that? I humanized baby carrots

I propose this:

Leave the animal kingdom alone and lets start eating humans, because there is an obvious overpopulation and we can, indeed, treat them 'humanly' when we skin them and boil them and fry them and roast them...

YUM!

Now if you excuse me, I am going to Bombard some lentils with microwaves in an attempt to further mutilate them so they are fit for my consumption!

All your examples are higher animals...vertebrates with complex brains. A lobster is an invertebrate with a minimal CNS. It cannot anticipate even if dogs and cats do (which is a discussion for another day). It is strictly an instinct only critter.

If people have an issue with the boiling water, stick the damn lobster in the freezer for 20 minutes first. Or knife the thing in the head before dropping it in. Or don't. It will be just as dead in 60 seconds and still end up on the plate.

But please...we do NOT need more legislation coming in and crawling up our asses to find out if we killed a f*cking lobster humanely.

What about spring loaded mouse traps? Glue traps? Rat Poison? ALL of those things kill vertebrates in a much worse manner than lobster cooking. Spring traps often just maim and the mouse is left to wriggle around with a broken spine, trapped until taken away by a human. Glue traps are worse...they cannot move and dehydrate to death. Blood thinner traps (rat poison) make it bleed to death internally. So should we make those illegal and only allow live 'humane' traps so we can dispatch the mice with a jolt of electricity at a later time?

Quite an ironic example if you look at my avatar. Doing so would almost certainly spread disease from the fleas on the live mouse.

That's true with northern lobsters, the kind that are trapped in Maine. But the problem is that since these animals must be killed very painfully, maybe we should just... not kill them? There's no fair comparison between cows being sent up a chute and getting shot in the head or lobsters being put on ice, moved around through the air, and then slowly boiling to death.

Of course you mean only the children of the impoverished Irish?

I think you are mistaking humane for human.

Being humane to your food, making sure they feel as little pain as possible is part of what makes us human. We have the ability to do that, so why shouldn't we? In fact, as thinking, feeling creatures, we should.

Also, that isn't true about having to boil the lobster alive or spoil the meat. You can freeze it first, or you can stab it down the middle. The first one, no pain, the second, fast then it's over.

There is no getting around killing our meat, but we don't have torture it first.