Lobsters

[BitchesGetStuffDone]

My OH has brought home 2 live lobsters, expecting me to kill and cook them.

I am freaking out. I looked in to their little lobster eyes and they seemed to be saying "Please don't kill us, just put us back in the sea."

I can hear them moving about in the kitchen.

I told him to do it himself but he thinks I am being unreasonable. AIBU for not wanting to kill and cook them?

Get in the queue cheese

There's a step between being aware of where your food comes from and actually killing it yourself though

Yy to the sewer analogy!

I went to a teppanyaki restaurant and a group of 4 ordered the lobster. The chef put the lobsters on the hot plate and they were alive :(

I wonder if we could create a 'Free the Lobster' party...

There are a number of ways of preparing crustaceans that has been suggested as humane, but there are also questions as to how humane these methods actually are.

One such method is to place them in the refrigerator and allow them to become unconscious before placing them in boiling water. Unfortunately, once the lobster hits the boiling water they are quickly brought back to consciousness, and may live up to three minutes past this point.

Another method is to cut into their spinal column above their head before cutting up the rest of their body. However, if this research proves true, then these creatures will not only feel the pain of the initial severing, but they may also continue to feel pain throughout the several remaining strokes of the knife until their nervous system is completely destroyed.

www.treehugger.com/corporate-responsibility/new-research-suggests-ascreaming-lobstersa-in-boiling-pot-might-really-be-screaming.html

There's a step between being aware of where your food comes from and actually killing it yourself though

I agree. It's utterly ridiculous and it comes up on here time and time again.

My mother said that during WWII they raised rabbits and chickens in their London backyard. They are smalll and easily kept. Her father was okay with offing the birds but was too soft-hearted to do it to the rabbits. So he asked someone else to do it. Because it had to be done.

If I was starving I would kill. Even a pet, reluctantly, given the right level of hunger.

I don't think it's bad that we are divorced from killing for food. Or good that we cheerfully do that.

I don't think you should have to be willing to kill your own food actually I do but I think people have a moral obligation to think about the life and death of what they are consuming. To think that killing something is cruel and horrible, but then eating it anyway as long as you don't have to deal with the cruelty and horribleness is just hypocrisy.

Well I'm a hypocrit then because I love meat fish and seafood but wouldn't eat it if I had to kill it. I do know about what happens to get the food I love onto my plate but choose not to think too much about it because that would affect my enjoyment of it.

Then again I expect plenty of you wouldn't want to stick your finger up people's bums and other unpalatable things deal with the fine detail of what my job as a surgeon involves but would be happy to utilise my skills if you or your family needed them. So I think we're quits...

Then again I expect plenty of you wouldn't want to stick your finger up people's bums

I'm assuming people don't come to you to have your finger up their bum for fun though, but rather to check their prostate.

I'm not sure how you are confusing medical procedures with not wanting to think about animal death because it spoils your enjoyment of you poor welfare European pork product (only buy British pork people).

Are they still moving around in the kitchen?

Meh, it's a lobster. I doubt it has feelings.

Just stab it in the stabby place and get some homemade garlic mayo on the go.

You forgot the fries Socially

Meh, it's a lobster. I doubt it has feelings.

Apparently they do. There have been some recent studies on this and they feel more than we thought. Fear, for example.

But it's not just the not wanting to kill it yourself question, which I sympathise with as am a bit squeamish myself, it's all the hand wringing about how cruel it all is that's a bit bizarre coming from meat eaters - a suggestion that anyone who might kill and eat lobsters is some sort of barbarian. I eat mear and fish, I have killed lobsters and crabs, I have even set mouse traps as we're a bit infested. I'm not an animal hater.

Agreed, I love animals but I eat meat and fish, have plucked pheasants and skinned rabbits.

I have never killed anything bigger than a spider though.

I could probably do tot, but if have to give myself a talking to first.

It's a big step between preparing and eating meat or fish and killing it yourself. Doesn't make you a hypocrite.

I need to know how this story ended OP...

Offs
I have stuck my finger up many a Bum for fun.
I have however now decided to go veggie.
Thanks for that Op.

There goes my winter stews and fish n chips

You are not being unreasonable. I would be gobsmacked to have these brought home for me to kill and cook!

Not wanting to think about where meat comes from is like not wanting to think about the horrible conditions in factories where our clothes (for instance) are produced. I might not want to be a doctor, but I don't feel moral outrage at other people having the job of performing a colonoscopy.

Most British people don't like the idea of dogs in Korea being tortured to death to increase the tenderness of their meat. To me, the lobster being boiled alive is not so different from the Korean dog and cat butchering. Pigs are very intelligent animals and are reared and slaughtered in appalling conditions. It is hypocritical not to face this fact, yet most of my friends are happy to eat bacon.

Having said this, I guess I prefer hypocracy to cruelty. We are all hypocritical to some extent, but I would have trouble being friends with someone who could happily torture and kill a dog (as is common in Korea).

Clara I have travelled Korea extensively and have never come across dog or cat as food.... What part did you experience this in?

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_meat

Some reports that it is not always called dog in English, as Westerners are put off-

I need to know what happened to Larry and Linda OP

We eat lobster a few times a year & if you kill it first & then cook it, it is amazing, the prepared lobsters from supermarkets are very disappointing. I would weigh them individually & then decide how long to cook them, the meat continues to cook for a bit after you've drained them so don't over cook them. I've bought them cooked from the same fishmonger & they are much better freshly cooked. I like them US East Coast lobster salad style - celery, mayo etc served in brioche rolls.