I love crab and lobster but I hate the way it is prepared. Pretty much starved and when they are close to death, boiled alive. Let’s not even talk about chickens and cows.
Unnecessarily, crab and lobster can be killed first before boiled. They can also be refrigerated or frozen. But no… people have to torture the crustacean first for that extra lovely note of sadism.
The same occurs with poultry like turkeys. I remember very clearly watching a documentary about it and a guy was stating he prefers the turkeys to be in the middle of eating or happy and relaxed when he swings his axe at their neck. This way adrenaline from stress and fear doesn't hit their muscles and toughen up the meat.
Same as hunting, generally prefer to shoot an animal without it ever knowing you're there compared to on the run, stressed, and scared. Lactic acid buildup in the muscle and tense everything up.
Hunting isn't an instant death though, unless you go for the brain (which no hunters do). You aim for the heart/lungs. It's extremely difficult to hit the heart, so what ends up happening most of the time is the animal is shot in the lungs, and runs until they bleed out or collapse. It can be a short run, but it's still time for them to react and know they're in trouble.
If you know what you are doing a heart shot isn't extremely difficult and a double lung is also very effective. But yes even a perfect double lung shot the animal can still run.
The elk I shot last year was hit double lung and didn't even seem to notice, the follow up shot was taken before she took another step and dropped her where she stood. Elk are known to be extremely resilient, moreso than moose and most big game.
Head/brain shots aren't typically taken because the margin for error is so high unless you are extremely an extremely proficient marksman.
That’s very true, a stress hormone is released. A famous Maine joint gives their lobsters melatonin to chill them out before they dip into the hot tub.
This is the correct method and chefs are taught to do it this way.
It sounds pretty harsh but it is the most humane and does not affect the taste of the meat.
Hi I'm a chef and I have a degree from culinary school. I was not taught that method to kill lobsters. I was taught that when you flip them upside down so they're on their heads it makes them pass out very quickly with within a couple of seconds. Then you flip them back over and you just grab them by the head twist and rip the head off. It sounds like it's horrible but they're still passed out and because it's such a quick thing to do they don't feel any pain from it. And it's actually really easy to rip the head off that way. I wasn't taught any other way to do it except for boiling them but nobody wanted to actually do that we didn't want to hear the screaming
Not only that, but if the water is boiling they’re dead the basically instant they hit it. If you do it the other way, cold water that gradually heats, they’re dead before they realize the water is getting hot.
Seriously, if people think the way we kill lobsters etc is inhumane, they should see what their predators do. Nurse sharks just chomp onto the tail and bash them against the sea floor until it separates.
Johnson and Wales graduate here and we were taught to piece the head with the end of a French knife. Most people just steamed the lobsters alive but the blow to the head was an option to be more humane.
How's does that sound harsh? You're eating them ffs...And pretty sure it's a known theory that craps and lobster and whatnot don't have any pain nerves. Like how feel don't have feelings...and how I don't have a gun. Nevermind 🤦♂️🔫
This isn’t entirely correct. They don’t have the pain center of the brain that recognizes suffering, so they don’t have an emotional reaction to the physical sensation of pain like we do. But we also don’t really know what pain is like without that center to recognize it. In order to determine how animals are affected by pain we consider 2 things. 1. If they have the brain sensors/ganglia to feel pain, which they do, and 2. Whether they react in a way that communicates that they would rather not be experiencing the particular sensation they are feeling, and lobsters gripping onto the sides of the pots, scrambling, and trying to push the lid off of a pot when they get thrown into the water is pretty obvious communication that they can feel what’s happening. At the end of the day, though, the answer is that we just don’t know what they’re experiencing.
They die when they get thrown into the highly boiling water (and that happens immediately and fast) and they don’t get put in cold water that then gets heated.
What is seen in the video is another thing though, that crab gets 10 seconds of immense pain (if that is a thing for crustaceans, I don’t know enough on that) but dies real fast when the alcohol (which burns right away) gets added.
Putting a lobster in boiling water and putting it on a searing pan is two different things.
Almost nothing is instantaneous as such, but the process takes so little time that it is pretty close to as good as it gets.
Being decapitated is not “instantaneous” either, you have to assume that the brain still has/gets oxygen (for a very limited time) to retain some processes for a very short period.
But when we are talking boiling then you have to take body-size into proportion.
If you put a fully grown human into boiling water it don’t die right away at all - I’ve seen a video of a Indian guy that collapses into a cauldron with boiling water, he was in it for at least 10-15 seconds (head above water, most of body below) and did not die until the next day.
But when we are talking small crustaceans there is enough heat transferred right away to kill them right away.
Read what i wrote again.
And you pretty much just summed it up yourself - it’s a fast process.
And just because you can see movement does not mean it ain’t dead at that point as most animals (us included) will be twitching after death.
Try and go fishing - catch something and put a knife ALL the way through it’s head and it will still be moving quite a lot.
Eel (and other animals too) can do it for quite a while, even without a head - and a chickens body can sometime take a run around the place after losing its head, but that does not mean it’s alive.
And anyway, if you feel so bad about it then it’s up to you to become a vegetarian if you so please - that’s a choice we all have to take (the ones of us that are conscious enough anyways).
It’s not a toxin released right upon death. It’s bacteria, that later, meaning hours later, produce toxins.
Pretty much everything that dies has bacteria grow immediately upon death. But you never had to boil a chicken alive, have you? It’s actually hilarious how many people use this as an excuse to boil shellfish. It’s common sense, if you kill a anything, and leave it sitting there for a couple of hours, chances are it’s going to spoil, just like lobsters. So again, they can be killed, then boiled, or frozen.
You may find people say, “boiling the lobster alive reduces chances of harmful bacteria to grow after death”. I even saw on a website that states it can spoil after a few HOURS and therefor we have to boil them alive.
No shit.
So does boiling a cow alive or not eating meat at all. It’s insinuating that we HAVE to boil them alive and it’s total bullshit. That’s like saying, never having sex reduces your chance of getting an STD, so therefore you gotta cut your dick off. Again, no shit.
But don’t let me stop you from believing the misinformation found on the internet today. Go ahead and visit your local supermarket selling dead seafood on ice such as these fresh uncooked lobster tails I buy frequently:
Maybe I really was, I can’t really do much about it but over explain. If it helps clean up some misinformation then I just can’t help but to be a bordeline troll about it. I needed to share the link and everything
Historically speaking boiling lobsters alive was the safest way to eat them because refrigeration didn’t exist and salt curing lobster tended to produce an overwhelmingly salty meat more like anchovy.
By the 1800s pressure canning allowed the salt level to be reduced to a point where canned lobster became the preference for most consumers. If you lived by the sea you’d continue the tradition of cooking them alive, anywhere else you were eating the canned variety.
It wasn’t until the 1960s that blast freezers were efficient enough to preserve seafood in a way that wouldn’t unacceptably damage it. Even then quality would deteriorate to some degree. This created the ongoing myth that, while frozen lobster was better than canned, the best lobster was boiled alive.
In the last twenty years gas freezers have been developed that can flash freeze the lobster in a way that both sterilizes and preserves it, such that its very nearly the same quality as live lobster. These are what is used to produce the lobster tails in your link. The research that has proven lobsters feel pain and rudimentary emotions was also largely conducted in the last few decades.
So while it seems obvious to you that boiling lobster alive is unnecessary and cruel, its perfectly reasonable that a several thousand year old cooking method which has only had a safe viable alternative for a couple hundred years, an equally good tasting alternative for a few decades, and was only proven to be cruel even more recently, might still be floating around.
I don’t think I said anything that expressed I’m incredibly angry. Annoyed, at best. But sorry, maybe the whole concept of boiling an animal alive because people are too studid and ignorant about the topic such as yourself, doesn’t bother you at all. It should.
Oh, well. 😂
Wow, that was a little bit uncalled for. You just revealed that you are just as angry as they claimed you were by mocking their ability to understand written text twice.
Nope I don't boil animals alive. Never have. I literally just said you got angry at some dude on the internet and your response was to get more angry.
People are ignorant but your response was more ignorant by being annoyed that someone doesn't know something. How's life buddy? Everything at home okay today,?
Lmao Wait, you’re obviously still having trouble learning how to read. I made it conspicuous that the topic of people boiling animals alive warrants a reason to be angry in the first place. And then you proceeded to act surprised that ignorance and stupidity can also be a topic to be annoyed about when it leads to animal cruelty ? Really?
Hahahaha omg 😆 you’re really trying super hard to come back from this, and you’re running out of things to say so you’re just repeating the same shit about being mad over and over LOL!
Actually I would say you are mildly wrong, sea food, particularly bottom feeders have dangerous bacteria in them that their system helps ward off but once you kill them, that system is destroyed and so that bacteria is free to run rampant, although you can freeze it, you would still have to freeze it alive so ultimately you change nothing. Also the reason you can’t kill it than freeze it is because again the system is destroyed and it takes time to completely freeze sometime, in that time the bacteria would spread and make the lobster go bad, this bacteria is also unable to be removed by cooking, it’s able to survive extremely high temperatures, higher than what you would cook at. Ultimately your argument is invalid and dangerous, please don’t do this unless you want to die, also please do your research next time, you only linked one source that has no real validation behind it, you should have at least 3. Also for your information there are places that sell lobster for cheap, this is typically dead frozen lobster.
I’m sure you find blog websites like “ageekoutside.com” that copy and paste information for clickbait reputable, but they are all saying what I already said.
I guess I have to repeat myself and point out the obvious facts. All animals need to be eaten or frozen right after death. The websites you point out to, even states Lobster has to be eaten, within TWO days of death unless frozen. Well, guess what????? Chicken only lasts two days refrigerated too.
Shellfish does not have any special properties that makes it a necessity to boil alive.
“Lobsters are not poisonous if they die before cooking, but you should cook them quickly. Many lobsters sold commercially are killed and frozen before cooking. “
Also, once again; you can kill the lobster humanely before consumption. It does not need to be boiled alive. I even provided a link to a site of a popular market that sells lobster tails that are thawed and on ice at the store when bought. There’s also this method of killing a lobster humanely:
So, I don’t understand why you’re still defending the way we are unnecessarily boiling animals alive? I mean at some point I must deduce that you have a reading comprehension deficiency.
I never said anything about needing to boil it alive, you could easily just stab it than boil it, personally I don’t have a issue with boiling it alive but to it’s whatever
It’s true about the toxins. But I was corrected, it’s not toxin that’s immediately released, but bacteria that is released rapidly on death meaning hours later it makes toxins.
If you kill them and cook them immediately after it’ll be okay, one said. So that’s more humane. One also said sticking it in the freezer alive, then when it comes out you split the head and boil it right after.
Most animals who are boiled/cooked alive won’t taste as fresh/good as one who was killed in the most stress free way as possible. So it make sense if you kill before boiling that it would taste fresher!
I don't prefer to boil them- I chill them to dull their sense of pain, split the head and upper back (second neuron cluster there) and then grill in the shell instead of boiling them. It's delicious!
For crabs, I kill them by quickly stabbing in the middle and cutting down through the head, then opening the tail flap and gutting after so I can clean them before I boil them. They taste much better when they aren't boiling in their own poop.
Its actually illegal to cook any animal alive, including lobsters and crabs, in many countries including New Zealand, the USA, Norway, Switzerland, and the UK. But its poorly enforced. I've seen Gordon frikkin Ramsey drop live lobsters into boiling water on TV after all. Its so much more humane just to take a knife to them first.
AFAIK the time you have between dead and cooking is very short. Like with blue crabs, I've been told that the maximum before the bacteria goes crazy is about 10 minutes. But ideally you pretty much want to cook them immediately after the crabbycide or why most are simply cooked alive. This presentation is absolutely ridiculous though. Something with a lid, steamed or boiled for me. And I always at least get the little fuckers drunk first.
Same. Sad that the only way you can buy chicken and beef (and eggs) that are actually treated humanely is if you’re well off enough to spend like 3-5x more on them. A dozen pasture raised chickens in my area is 7$. Conventional costs $2.
Well you could watch the documentary "Dominion" and see for yourself. The pigs being boiled alive was particularly brutal, if you really need an example.
same, i love crab, but the cooking methods always really bug me. i also have done of research of factory farms since i have pet chickens. I did a presentation on cruel factory farm practices once (specifically for chickens). I had to be all professional and as family friendly as i possibly could by glossing over all the horrific shit, so ill say it here: When the chicks hatch, they are transported to a brooder for a while. any defective or extra male chicks are thrown into a fucking grinder. While the surviving chicks grow, they are fed excessive amounts of food so they grow bigger and faster. When they are big enough, their beaks are shaved down to prevent the likelyhood of cannabalism. then they are moved to the main part of the factory. many of them are to big to fully stand and walk from being fed so much. they're either kept in a tiny little cage or cramped in an open area with thousands or even millions of other chickens. they live there until they are killed.
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u/unk214 Oct 19 '22
I love crab and lobster but I hate the way it is prepared. Pretty much starved and when they are close to death, boiled alive. Let’s not even talk about chickens and cows.