Most chefs kill lobster in one of two ways: they either put them in a pot of water then bring it to a boil, causing the steam to escape from the carapace with a horrible keen, or they give them a healthy hack with a knife, bisecting the tiny, primitive brain stem. Some people find both of these methods to be inhumane, which is ridiculous, because lobster are essentially large bugs. I have immense respect for phylum arthropoda, but they’re nature’s robots. In her wisdom, she made the mechanized terrors full of sweet, delicate meat.
(I espouse a Third Way to clean them, involving twisting their tails from their still-living bodies and then using bits of their own antenna to clean them. Seriously.)
But for those who can’t conceptualize consciousness evolving on a sliding scale, there’s the “CrustaStun,” a two-thousand dollar device for restaurants that will electrocute any lobster placed in its briny death chamber in just five seconds.
Don’t miss the “Continuous Flow Stunner” for meat packing facilities, should you need to implement humane genocide on an industrial scale.
Product Page [CrustaStun.com via Shiny Shiny]
That device looks like an easy way for people to feel that they are being “ethical” which is tricky in the case of lobsters.
I would encourage anyone interested in lobsters and slightly perplexed about the strong emotions people have surrounding their preparation to read this article from Gourmet magazine by author David Foster Wallace about the Maine Lobster Festival- http://www.lobsterlib.com/feat/davidwallace/page/lobsterarticle.pdf
Disclaimer – Yes, the article is hosted on the PETA but the author is not affiliated with them
They didn’t wet the sponge!
They didn’t wet the sponge!!!
Couldn’t you use a taser?
but then the little buggers would be all “don’t tase me for my delicious bug meats, bro”
This is my favorite Joel post yet.
What about that high pressure machine that takes the crust off of the crustacean?
I thought I remembered reading a scientific article proofing that lobster and the like are unlikely able to feel pain. something about invertebrates and small brain.
Shame on you for this post! If not pain then how about this from Wiki:
Lobsters grow throughout their lives and it is not unusual for a lobster to live for more than 100 years
They may be IMMORTAL for fux sake! Why would you want to eat a creature that is immortal??