So there was a story on CNN yesterday about a new study that says lobsters most likely don’t experience pain when they’re being boiled alive.
As earth-friendly as I try to be, I have to admit that I hope this is true. I have a vivid childhood memory of someone putting a lobster (it might have been crawfish, I don’t remember for certain, but the result was the same) in a pot and then slamming a lid down on top of it. I could hear the metallic scrabbling sounds from inside. They seemed to go on forever and I almost cried. It was horrible, and to this day I can not bring myself to prepare lobster. Luckily, while I think it is tasty, I don’t consider it the fine delicacy that others of my acquaintance do. And I’ve had some pretty fine lobsters up on Cape Cod. So if I never do cook a lobster, I won’t miss it much, but at least now, if I do, I can attempt to appease my guilty conscience. Yay for that.
I’d like to know they define “feel.” Who decides how much it needs to process stimulus-wise before it counts as “feeling”? How does anyone know what goes on in another creature? Anyhow, it’s trying to escape and doesn’t want to die. That’s enough for me - I can find something else to eat.
“I could hear the metallic scrabbling sounds from inside…” Sounds like something out of a horror movie and makes me very glad I’m vegetarian!
cricket
February 22nd, 2005
Some of my more conscientious students actually did a study on animals and pain for a project I assigned earlier in the year. Because I thought it was an interesting idea, I followed their research, and we worked together when the science was over our heads. Here’s what we found out (in a project that set out to be animal activist piece):
There are two “pain mechanisms” designed to protect us from harm, as exampled when you put your hand on a hot item, yank your hand away, and then feel the pain (seems like an illogical order, yes?). When you touch a hot item, two nerve signals get sent. The first one goes to a nerve center located outside of your brain that does not interpret pain, but does make you react to it. This is why you automatically yank your hand off of the hot item before you “feel” the heat. The second signal travels all the way to the brain and alerts something in your… hmm, I’m forgetting… medula oblongata?… which interprets the signal as pain, and then your hand starts hurting.
Pretty much every animal has that first signal, the yank/thrash thing. It takes a certain level of brain power to have the second. Without the second, you don’t know you’re having a problem, your body’s just reacting. A butterfly can’t tell the difference between landing on a hot metal chair, a smoldering campfire, and a bed of lava, but it’s body will leave without it thinking about it. If it can leave from the lava. But you get the point.
The research that I’ve seen shows that lobsters have the first reaction, but are not developed enough to have the second. Their thrashing is like your hand yanking off the hot stove, but there’s no secondary signal saying “ouch”. Now you can argue, if you’d like, that’s inconvenient to the lobster to have nerve reactions going on around him. And if that’s your problem, don’t eat lobster. But pain, no. The different pieces of research I’ve read shows pretty convincingly that the lobster is not under painful mental duress (and no, the research didn’t come from The Maine Lobster Society or something). It is definitely not the same as boiling a human or a dog or a cat. That would be incredibly cruel, because we understand pain. Lobsters don’t.
So, yeah, I believe the CNN article. You’re always going to have somebody arguing that it’s unfair to whatever’s being eaten (I’ve had somebody try to explain to me how eating fruit is robbing plants of their children), so of course there’s opposition. However, while there are certainly things I will not eat, like foie gras and veal, because I think it causes cruelty to animals, lobster is, most fortunately, not one of them.
Xaverri
February 23rd, 2005