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Octopuses, crabs and lobsters to be recognised as sentient beings under UK law
- kwhitefoot 5y agoReminds me of Max's efforts on behalf of the lobsters in Charlie Stross's Accelerando!
- slackfan 5y agoGood for the feelings of the UK legislature I suppose, however, they're all still quite delicious.
- secondaryacct 5y agoAt least after Brexit, they can't say they're unable to make their own laws... /bitter
- WhompingWindows 5y agoThere's no reason to boil these creatures alive. Insert the knife into one key brain region and it's lights out, no more suffering instantly. Chefs can take 3 seconds to end their life with mercy, or they can throw a living creature into boiling water.
- yawaworht1978 5y agoYes ,don't cook lobsters alive I would say. Most animals can definitely feel pain, maybe even insects. Don't cause them unnecessary pain. It's pretty said that the so called most intelligent animal species needs laws to understand that.
- wruza 5y agoHow not causing pain to animals when cooking them relates to intelligence? I suspect that my comment can sound blunt to you, so let me explain. When a human wants to eat something, their goal is not only to eat, but to do that without harming their emotional state. E.g. if I (or anyone) wanted to eat badly and catched an animal, I wouldn’t boil it alive, because it would scream of pain and hurt my mental state. But if it doesn’t show any signs of it under the lid, like a crab or a lobster, then what’s the deal? Why go to lengths cutting specific nerves behind a hard carapace, if it does zero harm to me? I see that it may do harm to you, but animals suffer all the time, everywhere in the nature. I don’t understand how to think this way and not burst in tears every minute of my life. Isn’t it more intelligent to accept the fact that the nature sucks and you can’t do much to it? I’m not writing it to bother you, I genuinely don’t understand the logic of said relation.
- scoutt 5y agoI suppose we are intelligent enough to understand that our actions may provoke pain, and that we are also intelligent enough to know that someone/something might feel pain even if it's not evident. You don't have to burst in tears, it's enough to be aware of some facts and deal with them. You deal with them by "not seeing, not hearing" (or not wanting to). It's fine.
- mypastself 5y agoPresumably, intelligence entails understanding that suffering can take forms other than the immediately obvious ones, and taking steps to minimize it if possible.
- wruza 5y agoI’m aware that it may feel pain either just like I do, or in a different way. My question is why should I be agitated by this thought, iow what is the reason to reduce it. I don’t relate its suffering to my “soul” or a mental state. Not talking about morals here, I wouldn’t boil a live crab in a presence of people who would react negatively. See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305117 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29305117
- spuz 5y agoI think the answer is most people will suffer negative mental effects if they believe they have caused more suffering to an animal than is necessary to achieve the same outcome (i.e. feeding oneself) and also that they believe that boiling an animal could cause it more suffering than to kill it by an alternative method.
- mypastself 5y agoMost people don’t wish to cause undue harm to others, human or animal, because it causes them anguish. We are capable of abstract thought and understand persistence of objects. I think those two facts are sufficient to understand why intelligent beings are agitated even by indirect expressions of suffering.
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- SyzygistSix 5y agoBut they taste good with garlic butter. That is both true and an incredibly lame argument when I write it out. I have strong feelings about octopuseses and the people who eat them for entertainment. I wish we knew how sentient and pain-aware lobsters are.
- Frondo 5y agoParent said "don't cook them alive," not "don't cook them." It's not hard to kill a lobster before you drop it in the pot - slip a knife into its neck above its carapace. This was a test on one of those Gordon Ramsay shows, so if he can kill them first and still make tasty food, I think we all can. But really, if there were an animal that I could only eat by inflicting pain on it first (i.e. causing pain and not striving to minimize its suffering), I wouldn't eat it.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- sam0x17 5y agoRelated and relevant: https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wg8m2/is_it_true_that_descartes_nailed_dogs_to_boards/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/7wg8m2/is_it...
- adamcharnock 5y agoEven as a meat eater I’m pretty shocked that this recognises them as sentient and yet does not ban their slaughter (aside from boiling them alive etc). Maybe I’ve read too much science fiction, but eating sentient beings seems Bad.
- Dylan16807 5y ago> Maybe I’ve read too much science fiction, but eating sentient beings seems Bad. The common scifi definition of "sentient" isn't the dictionary definition.
- Mikeb85 5y agoI mean, we know cattle, sheep, chickens and pigs are sentient yet we consume them. Why would we make an exception for octopods and shellfish?
- adamcharnock 5y agoI guess I didn’t know that either. I should probably read into this in more detail…
- traverseda 5y agoYou're probably thinking of "sapient" which generally implies higher reasoning. "Sentient" means able to feel things, and it's pretty obvious that animals can feel pain.
- forty 5y agoIt's not obvious at all. Actually it's not obvious at all that anything else than yourself can feel pain :) I agree that it's a reasonable extrapolation though :)
- rembicilious 5y agoI have stepped on a dogs foot. It made a “Yipe!” noise and leapt back. Then it approached me “submissively”, with it’s head held low and tail down. It seems rather “obvious” to me that the animal felt pain, reacted suddenly to the sensation, and then completely changed it’s demeanour towards me.
- monkeybutton 5y agoOctopi I understand, but lobsters? They have less than half the nervous system of an ant [1]. Are individual ants sentient and worthy of legislating over? [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of_neurons https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_animals_by_number_of...
- adriand 5y agoBy this logic, humans should be given only half the consideration we give to orcas, which according to the resource you posted, have twice the neurons we do.
- lanevorockz 5y agoIt also means that deep learning algorithms will soon deserve more rights than humans.
- yostrovs 5y agoOnce sentient, extra neurons don't change the status of a sentient being.
- BeeBoBub 5y agoThat’s not really the argument monkeybutton is making, the point is lobsters’ neural complexity is similar to ants, and orcas are comparable to humans.
- lanevorockz 5y agoIt’s still a gradation, “as complex” is obviously a stretch. The whole argument is silly, soon turning off my Deep Learning algorithms because they are more complex than lobster.
- jojobas 5y ago500 years ago the argument that black people should have rights was just as silly. We'll live to see some sort of AI rights protection laws.
- otherotherchris 5y agoWhen exactly are they going to classify factory farmed pigs as sentient?
- andrekandre 5y agoso, if they are sentient, they can still be eaten legally... then what is the red-line for allowing or not (an animal) to be eaten? sapience?
- thablackbull 5y agoRandom thought: Give every child one as a pet so they get emotionally attached and over time, society will grow to associate these creatures as man's friend.
- 1270018080 5y agoMy grandma lived on a farm and loved playing with the cows. Once she was old enough to connect the dots on what happened to them, and later saw the butchering process, she became vegetarian for life. The layer of separation 99% of the population has between the dark evils of the mass livestock industry and eating meat is an issue.
- phonypc 5y agoNearly everyone has recent ancestors that lived on a farm and loved playing with the animals. Once they were old enough to connect the dots and later saw the butchering process, they remained omnivores for the rest of their lives.
- LouisSayers 5y agoLike my Gran tells us, when she was a girl her mother asked her if she'd like some chicken for dinner. "Oh yes" my gran said enthusiastically; she pointed out the window and said "which one"? "Then I went and wrung its neck".
- blitzar 5y agoNot unlike how a significant portion of the world would buy a chicken now. "I would like a chicken", "dead or alive, feathers on or feathers off?".
- chrisweekly 5y agoCrabs and lobsters are basically bugs, whereas an octopus is a creative, playful, intelligent creature with amazing capabilities. It seems strange to group them together.
- lstodd 5y agoYup. Crab and lobster porn isn't really a thing, while Octopoda have a significant, lasting and ancient presence in Japanese lore, James Bond movies and whatnot.
- jetrink 5y agoThe James Bond character was actually named after a real octopus that Ian Flemming met in Jamaica[1]. Flemming wanted to befriend it, but before he could, it was eaten by his housemaid. (Credit for this knowledge to the No Such Thing as a Fish podcast.) 1. https://theverbaldiarist.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/my-friend-the-octopus-an-article-by-ian-fleming/ https://theverbaldiarist.wordpress.com/2019/09/27/my-friend-...
- stavros 5y agoAnd where are cuttlefish?
- peanut_worm 5y ago> The review drew on over 300 existing scientific studies to evaluate evidence of sentience in cephalopods (including octopuses, squid and cuttlefish) Cuttlefish very closely related to Octopi, I am sure they’d get lumped in with the other cephalopods wherever the law is concerned.
- stavros 5y agoAh okay, the initial sentence is illustratory, rather than exhaustive, then. Makes sense, thanks!
- ryan_j_naughton 5y ago
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- petre 5y agoDoes this mean that Gordon Ramsey doesn't get to throw live lobster into a boiling pot if water anymore?
- onemiketwelve 5y agoHe doesn't do that anymore
- boomboomsubban 5y agoI think this means the people that determine how animals should be treated now have the ability to rule lobsters can't be boiled alive.
- kawsper 5y agoOr put lobsters in crane arcade aquariums for guests to play with: https://youtu.be/FN8jyxz6QDc?t=1918 https://youtu.be/FN8jyxz6QDc?t=1918
- coolandsmartrr 5y agoDavid Foster Wallace once wrote an essay called "Consider the Lobster." He argued for the merciful eating of lobsters; rather than boil them alive, make their death instantaneous. How will the legal recognition change their treatment?
- tag2103 5y agoHopefully with extra butter on the side
- andrew_ 5y agoPlease don't leave out the Old Bay seasoning, in a class its own.
- nomorecommas 5y agoButter definitely makes everything better. I'm so grateful for cows!
- systemvoltage 5y agoIt is actually insane that there is so much violence in nature. Every minute, there are millions of living things dying – many with unimaginable pain. The evolutionary engine is absolutely merciless. If I want to be terrified, I think what if we, instead of at the top of the food chain, were just second. It terrifies me to no end.
- peanut_worm 5y agoBoiling to death is pretty cruel even for nature. Getting eaten alive honesty doesn’t even sound as bad.
- musingsole 5y agoYou'll die faster dropped into boiling water than watching over hours as bears eat your guts and then wander off once their sated. I assure you, getting eaten alive is far worse than boiling to death.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y agoGood. Especially for octopuses, which are amazing animals - clearly intelligent and sentient.
- tenderfault 5y agoand tasty. I said it, so you won't have to.
- Ursium 5y agoOk so let's say this passes... surely we can't boil them alive anymore and social media platforms will delete the strange 'muckbang' videos. Right? RIGHT?
- wly_cdgr 5y agoRock lobster? Jazz lobster
- ravenstine 5y agoBlue(s) lobster
- pm90 5y agoThis is a good step. I am a meat eater and I love eating meat, including all kinds of seafood. Even though I agree with all the ethical arguments against meat eating, I cannot bring myself to stop eating meat: it’s something I both grew up with and have a taste for. Recently I’ve been switching my diet to eat more seafood when I crave meat (rather than land animals). Things like this will at least let me be better informed and nudge myself to eat less of the sentient beings. Lobsters are unfortunately too tasty to give up completely but it’s also not something I would eat daily anyways; most of my diet is salmon and sardines.
- hi41 5y agoThe essay "Consider the Lobster" by David Foster Wallace came to my mind. In that essay he describes how extraordinary the nervous system of a lobster is and how mindlessly and cruelly we boil them live. If David were still alive, he would definitely welcome this development. I really miss David. I am awestruck by his other essay "This is Water". I am amazed at his deep insights into human nature and how well he describes it, kindly.
- mrsmee89 5y agoBoth of those essays are fantastic. I find “This is water” to be especially poignant.
- Issaclabs 5y agoVery pleased to see this comment here :). I would definitely recommend his essays and especially his book infinite jest, if you have the stomach for it.
- jjcon 5y agoLobsters have essentially the same number of neurons in their entire nervous system (including the “brian”) as a fruit fly does. Complex yes? Interestingly complex? Not even close. A cockroach has 10x more.
- omnicognate 5y agoNot sure what you mean by "interestingly complex". To say we are nowhere near understanding the nervous systems of fruit flies would be a massive understatement. Even for C.Elegans, for which we know the complete connectome and much more besides (and which has a thousandth of the number of neurons a fruit fly does), we're not close to explaining (or simulating) the behaviour of the animal in terms of the properties of the nervous system.
- stickfigure 5y agoAre you suggesting I should feel bad about squishing fruit flies?
- whalesalad 5y agoSeems kinda ridiculous to classify some animals as sentient but not others. Particularly when you consider the Lobster vs the Octopus.
- throwawaymanbot 5y agoBravo UK, Now recognize the Irish.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Borrible 5y agoI sense a new and creative way to annoy the EU and especially the French fishing industry boiling up. Who really cares for Hank, Jaques and Bob... Can't remember, is there a red herring in 'Finding Nemo'?
- mensetmanusman 5y agoI was looking for this type of analysis. Part of me wonders whether this was the true motivation for Brexit.
- Borrible 5y agoFor me it was a gamble gone bad. But based on a deeper shift in global power politics, also regarding the relationship of the USA and Europe. Great Britain had to decide between a deeper loyalty to the USA or the EU. I don't think the Brexit was planned to be successful. It may have been planned to be a tool to recalibrate the relations to the EU and got out of hand, Wizard's Apprentice. They probably thought they could deepen the relationship with the USA in the coming Cold War with China and still reap the benefits of the EU without the annoying parts.
- biganutz 5y ago/crab rave
- tenderfault 5y agomeantime on Christmas island:
- bikamonki 5y agoWill there be a law prohibiting other predators, not humans, from hunting these animals?
- sweetheart 5y agoWhy would that ever happen?
- kataklasm 5y agoThat is absolutely not comparable and equates to FUD. In a healthy and normally operating ecosystem hierarchies of animals exist and make sure the ecosystem stays in balance. Yes, there are predators killing octopuses and crabs out there in the wild, but it's not to sell them in underwater restaurants and boutiques for a hefty markup to finance the underwater economy. Every animal that kills other animals, apart from humans, does so either for nutritional or recreational reasons. If it's the latter, it is never out of proportion. You don't see a wolf population completely eliminating a population of [animal in a lower hierarchy], they will reduce their population but never endanger the species themselves. What humans are doing is exactly that: we are killing such huge amounts of different species, tagt we are often enda
- s1artibartfast 5y agoYou seem to be conflating two very different issues. Sustainable harvest and humane practices. Having humane handling laws doesn't do anything to ensure a sustainable fishery. Conversely, having a sustainable fishery doesn't mean that the animals are handled humanely.
- bikamonki 5y agoHold it. Apparently, the motivation here is to acknowledge that these animals are somehow sentient; in other words, if any law is passed, it will be to prohibit practices that make these animals suffer. Nothing is said here about depredation of these animals populations. So, IMO, a lobster boiled alive will suffer just as much as a lobster crushed by the jaws of a hungry seal. So, do we need to legally protect them from seals and its horrific hunting practices?
- deanCommie 5y agoContext: I'm not a hypocrite. I eat a lot of meat. I would put very strong money down that by the time most people reading these comments are in an old folks home with their grandchildren, the vast majority of the population will consider consumption of all meat unethical. I don't think it will be illegal yet (just extremely regulated, and expensive - not the least bit because the carbon footprint of meat production will be fully factored into the price). But to most people under 30 they will consider it as ridiculous as smoking. And they'll ask us uncomfortable questions we won't have good answers for. Didn't you know about the health risks at the amounts you were consuming? Didn't you know about the carbon footprint? Most importantly, didn't you have ample evidence of consciousness, personality, and sentience in every way that is reasonable to us? We didn't eat dogs but considered pigs and cows different? Why? And we won't have answers. A few more decades and people will look back, note the high numbers of vegetarians and vegans in the public sphere, and ask the people of that present to stop venerating historical figures from our time because of pictures of them eating steaks. They'll say "even by the moral standards of the time, they were criticized. The information was all out there." I don't say any of the above as a value judgement that I think it's good or bad. Just that I think it's inevitable.
- post_from_work 5y ago>>>And they'll ask us uncomfortable questions we won't have good answers for. Didn't you know about the health risks at the amounts you were consuming? Yup. Didn't care. Bacon-wrapped filet mignon tastes THAT good. Some things are worth the risk. Like driving too fast, riding motorcycles, or skydiving. >>>Didn't you know about the carbon footprint? Same answer here... >>>Most importantly, didn't you have ample evidence of consciousness, personality, and sentience in every way that is reasonable to us? And here too. >>>We didn't eat dogs but considered pigs and cows different? Why? I actually HAVE eaten dog. It's a specialty delicacy in Korea. I think most of the world isn't anywhere close to taking the conscientious Western approach to animal flesh.
- deanCommie 5y agoNot today. I guess I should have been more clear I'm speaking about the Western World. In 50 years, consumption of animal meat will be like caviar+cigarettes+segregated bathrooms are today in the Western World. The rest of the world? Too many variables, depends a lot on climate change.
- tagrun 5y agoNot trying to argue it's OK to subject animals to unnecessary pain (it shouldn't be!), but from a pure logical consistency standpoint, are there many non-sentient animals? Why is it OK to not recognize mosquitos, rats, termites, deers, ants, etc etc which meet painful demise by humans as sentient animals while making exceptions for a few?
- emptysongglass 5y agoAccording to the Buddha, one should not kill any sentient being, sentient being defined as made up of the five skandhas: matter, sensation, perception, mental formations and consciousness. I had a very easy time following this rule until my houseplants were attacked by spider mites and almost simultaneously my rats attacked by a different species of mites. How does one watch the beings (I don't apply "being" to the plants but do to my rats) they love be drained of their vitality by other beings and refuse to intervene? Is it right? My wife, who is not a Buddhist, intervened, and both rats and plants survived but this experience deeply shook me. One might say I am experiencing a crisis of faith.
- rlonn 5y agoI admire the jainist (?) philosophy of not killing, but it does seem incredibly impractical, to the point of being stupid even. How do you avoid killing mites on the ground when you go out for a walk?
- emptysongglass 5y agoI agree that the Jainist philosophy is impractical: the essential difference between the Jainist philosophy of non-harm and the Buddhist is one of intention.
- freetinker 5y agoJain philosophy.
- crucialfelix 5y agoThey sweep the ground in front of them with a broom. To be precise, the monks do this, and the laity work as jewelers in Manhattan and support the monks financially.
- tenderfault 5y agoso, the dispute with France over post-Brexit fishing rights didn't go too well then? innit?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- gorgoiler 5y agoCan you be more explicit? What you hint at sounds really interesting. I think you are suggesting that the Animal Welfare Bill has an intended side effect of tipping the balance of cross channel cooked shellfish trade in favour of the UK? Or I didn’t get the joke.
- tenderfault 5y agoyou didn't get the joke because you are living it. the real question is, what would monty python say? ** The Brit who longed for lobster, beholds with pain The tempting clusters were too high to gain; Grieved in his heart he forced a careless smile, And cried, ‘They’re sharp and hardly worth my while. **
- sh4un 5y agoUgh. Does this mean 2022 is going to be filled with movie prequels full of shellfish and octopi cast members?
- b3nji 5y agoSo, that means we are going to not being able to kill, and eat them then, right??
- spullara 5y agoThis makes me think they are likely smarter than the people making this law in the UK.
- 4monthsaway 5y agoI imagine some crabby responses to this
- IanSanders 5y agothis is not reddit
- rich_sasha 5y agoWhat does this mean in practice? By this definition, surely normal farm animals are sentient, but they are eaten, experimented on and frightfully frequently abused, so... what’s the change?
- eterm 5y agoOne significant change is that the practice of boiling live lobsters is now illegal.
- rich_sasha 5y agoInteresting, and good for them. What about crabs I wonder? IIUC coup de grace js fairly straightforward for a lobster but not so for a crab.
- wiz21c 5y agothe issue is that killing lobster without boiling them is not clear cut either. The animal happens to have numerous brains all over its body, so when is it actually dead ?
- GordonS 5y agoI like to eat crab and lobster, but I never understood how anyone could boil one of them alive - even if it hasn't (or hadn't) been 100% proven they can feel pain, it seems such a horrible, horrible thing to do! I'm not any kind of animal rights activist, but it makes me feel upset just thinking about it :shudder:
- rich_sasha 5y agoThe theory I hear from people who do it is that the animals die instantly in thermal shock. Would be great if someone in the know could comment; I'm certainly not endorsing this view!
- joaosardinha 5y agoMy family does this, I remember watching them try to crawl out of the pot for the first few minutes so it's not true
- MadeThisToReply 5y ago[flagged]
- TaylorAlexander 5y agoIt’s a good illustration of different online circles. Thankfully HN isn’t Twitter or Reddit. HN is it’s own microcosm (with its own idiosyncrasies).
- ebanana 5y agoI like jokes but all jokes aside Jordan Peterson’s material helped me get off of opiates
- zivkovicp 5y agoThere are already too many laws, it's unfortunate that the bureaucracy continues to grow with so little resistance.
- bodge5000 5y agoI don't know, I'm not a huge fan of government overreach but banning the boiling alive of animals that can demonstrably feel the pain and distress of it purely because its either easier or it marginally improves the taste (truth be told I have no idea why we do it, I assume its one of those two) is something Im willing to let slide
- imdsm 5y agoI don't like to bring politics to HN but I wonder if the LSE would also agree the same about Jewish people and students? Absolutely terrible conduct from the LSE recently in this regard.
- gercott 5y agoA lot of animals that are eaten are also sentient, not only these three sea creatures.
- catlikesshrimp 5y agoAfter reading the title, what came to my mind was: Either UK is paradise and legislators have the resources to elbow Plato, Kant, Nietzsche and the rest, or the British population is becoming as religious as the vedic hindu population (for whom cows are sacred) But after the brief surprise, I assume someone is pushing to sell certified lobster stunners, and maybe provide installation and servicing for them. Mandated by law.
- chunkyslink 5y agoAll animals should start with protected status until wwe can prove they don't feel anything
- deelly 5y agoSpecies count put at 8.7 million: https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-14616161 https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-14616161 So, we will have what do in next few hundreds years..
- francisofascii 5y agoRelated: The documentary "My Octopus Teacher" (2020) on Netflix is delightful. It is a good show for all ages.
- akagusu 5y agowhile crabs and others will receive more welfare protections, people (as citizens, workers and consumers) are getting your protections slowly removed, one by one, bill after bill, staying at the mercy of corrupt politicians, ruthless employers and greedy corporations. How long to a human being is worth less than an animal?
- anhner 5y agoIt already is in the eyes of some extremist vegans. (see the "never touch anything animal related for whatever reason" crowd but who then go on and drink gallons of cashew milk from farms of abused workers)
- ben_w 5y agoI get the impression that’s more of a lack of awareness of the higher-order consequences than direct value judgements. I see that in a lot of other cases.
- LatteLazy 5y agoThe first cases for child abuse in the USA were prosecuted using animal welfare laws. I think the same thing is true in the UK. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/health/15abus.html https://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/15/health/15abus.html
- ben_w 5y agoDo you mean in general, or do you mean like a return to owning slaves, anti-miscegenation laws? In the latter, I’d say there’s a roughly constant probability density function over 50-year bucketed time periods. In the former, why do you imagine humans would switch to becoming worth less than animals?
- Communitivity 5y agoAbout time. Anyone that has seen a video of an octopus solving puzzles should realize they are sentient. I have a hope that the U.S. will follow suit with a similar law.
- vanilla-almond 5y agoExtracts from the LSE report summary: Recommendations relating to specific commercial practices - Declawing. We have high confidence that declawing (removing one or both of the claws from a crab before returning it back to the water) causes suffering in crabs. - Nicking. We also have high confidence that the practice of nicking (cutting the tendon of a crab’s claw) causes suffering and is a health risk to the animals. - Wholesale and retail. We recommend a ban on the sale of live decapod crustaceans to untrained, non-expert handlers. - Stunning. Current evidence indicates that electrical stunning with appropriate parameters for the species can induce a seizure-like state in relatively large decapods, and that stunning diminishes, without wholly abolishing, the nervous system’s response to boiling water. We interpret this as evidence that electrical stunning is better than nothing. - Slaughter (decapods). We recommend that the following slaughter methods are banned in all cases in which a more humane slaughter method is available, unless preceded by effective electrical stunning: boiling alive, slowly raising the temperature of water, tailing (separation of the abdomen from the thorax, or separation of the head from the thorax), any other form of live dismemberment, and freshwater immersion (osmotic shock). On current evidence, the most reasonable slaughter methods are double spiking (crabs), whole-body splitting (lobsters), and electrocution using a specialist device on a setting that is designed and validated to kill the animal quickly after initially stunning it. - Slaughter (cephalopods). Various different slaughter methods are currently used on fishing vessels in European waters, including clubbing, slicing the brain, reversing the mantle and asphyxiation in a suspended net bag. We are not able to recommend any of these methods as humane. On current evidence, there is no slaughter method for cephalopods that is both humane and commercially viable on a large scale.
- abandonliberty 5y agoI couldn't find their most reasonable slaughter methods easily. Perhaps https://www.instructables.com/Live-Crab-How-To-Kill-Instantly-and-Humanely-Cooki/ https://www.instructables.com/Live-Crab-How-To-Kill-Instantl... for crabs
- koalafied 5y agoI’m a bit surprised by the number of comments here basically saying if we can’t logically prove that X feels pain, then it’s fine to do whatever with it, or that if we don’t know exactly where the line should be drawn, then there’s no line to be drawn at all. Do you all always behave according to well-defined rules within a consistent logical system? I don’t think you can prove to me that you or your pets feel pain, so what would be the logical consequence of that?
- drewg123 5y agoPeople didn't think human babies could feel pain until the 1980s[1], and commonly did operations w/o anesthetic. [1]: https://www.newsweek.com/when-doctors-start-using-anesthesia-babies-medics-thought-they-couldnt-feel-pain-1625350 https://www.newsweek.com/when-doctors-start-using-anesthesia...
- q1w2 5y agoGeneral anesthetic has been shown to cause brain damage. Surgery on infants without anesthetic has been shown to cause emotional differences in children. There's no good solution. Doctors were weighing consequences with little data.
- lulzury 5y agoDo you have any source to back up your first claim? My understanding is that general anesthetic has been fairly well understood for some time and relatively free of long-term side-effects.
- LdSGSgvupDV 5y agoHow to define "feel pain"? It is quite difficult and varies from person to person. I have some memories when I'm 1~3 years old. I can not "feel" any physical and mental pain at all but I might response to that pain event by crying. There is no specific meaning for crying. Maybe just like breathing? One memory is that I hit my head on a rough rock when I was at the age of learning walking and little blood flowed through my forehead. In that time, I didn't feel any pain and was curious on why adults and old sister were so "nervous". In my view, they spoke loudly than usual and rushed to me. I didn't know what they were talking about but I could feel they feared for something. Another memory is that I shot myself on breast by gas gun, and got bruise (I didn't notice that after I grew up and my parents told me). The age might be 2~4 years old. The same as first one, I did not feel any pain but the fear in adults. ps: When I was 6~7 years old, I shot myself with air gun on arm again. This time I felt the pain. That was fucking hurt.
- patagonia 5y agoThere are a lot of comments asking for vegans to explain themselves and their choices. Vegans are not doing something. If I sit in a chair quietly in a room and another person in the room is running around breaking stuff because “it’s enjoyable” and “the stuff can’t feel any pain” I doubt you’d ask me, the person sitting quietly in their chair, to explain myself. Meat eaters with no concern for animal welfare or environmental concerns need to be doing the explaining.
- abandonliberty 5y agoThis isn't a vegan issue. Making it one, along with a smug characterization, doesn't help to convert more people over to your cause. Mature plants nurse their young, providing carbon to younger plants through a mycelial network[0]. They communicate with each other [1]. They generate compounds in response to pain, and might even have vision demonstrated by vines mimicking plastic plants they were grown on [2]. Give it 50 years until we recognize our cruel treatment of plants. Until then I'd recommend compassion, including for those who have different values and beliefs than you. [0] https://www.globehealth.net/soil-fertility/transfer-of-carbon-and-nutrients-between-plants.html https://www.globehealth.net/soil-fertility/transfer-of-carbo... [1] https://www.treehugger.com/injured-plants-warn-neighbors-danger-4852115 https://www.treehugger.com/injured-plants-warn-neighbors-dan... [2] https://nautil.us/issue/104/harmony/plants-feel-pain-and-might-even-see https://nautil.us/issue/104/harmony/plants-feel-pain-and-mig...
- patagonia 5y agoIf you read the comments you’ll see there is a conversation going on about vegan / non vegan issues. The conversion is happening in the comments. Regardless what the article’s issues are. You’ve grossly misused the word “nurse”. And “communicate”. Besides I, as a vegan, do not take issue with the taking of life for the purpose of sustaining life. Zero problem with that. That is how nature works. I only take issue with unnecessary pain / cruelty, at global, industrial scales no less. When people ask me to explain myself for not causing harm or pain or eating a creature when I didn’t have to, over and over and over again, and at the same are indignant if I ask them to explain their reasoning for supporting and participating in industrialized animal raising and slaughter, then yeah I lose patience with the process. It’s not smugness. I just no longer have patience for it. Like I have no patience for people equating fungi harvesting and the US industrialized beef production system. You can have different values than me. And most of the time I’d celebrate it. Unless your “values” are used to justify causing pain or harm to other beings or the environment. But if you are employing faulty logic, that’s on you. Faulty logic don’t not “values” make.
- entropicgravity 5y agoAnd spiders probably.
- HabiusRex 5y agoI stab them in the head before boiling. I believe this is more humane.
- cphoover 5y agoCrabs/Lobsters don't have a singular central nervous system like humans, they actually have multiple "brains" spread throughout their bodies.