One more reason to love PETA

It really is getting ridiculous isn't it.

The story doesn't mention PETA ...

And no, it's not getting ridiculous. If there's a way (as mentioned in the article) to kill these creatures that may be less painful to them, then by all means it behooves us to at least use that method, at least try to be more humane.

Even many predator animals try to make their kills swiftly and (although I'm sure they're not actually thinkng about it) as painless as possible.

Shel

Give me a break, I'm a chef, not a animal activist. This is how I make my living.

There put on earth for us to eat. If you don't want to eat them then don't. But don't tell me about more humane ways to "kill" a frigging crab.

I'm All For PETA

People Eating Tasty Animals!!

Seems like I touched upon a nerve, eh. Why not be humane and considerate to the food (animals) that you eat? Is there some reason that concept isn't worth implementing or even considering?

Shel

On what research do you base this statement? Stating that predators "try" to do something, indicates they would be thinking.

If you have some links with that type of information, I'd be willing to read them.

Personally, I'm not going to worry to much about a crab or lobster. They treat each other pretty brutally in the wild, a quick dunk in rolling boil and then some drawn butter doesn't seem too inhumane to me.

This from the article linked above:Seems like trying to decide how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. :rolleyes:

You're right - poor choice of words on my part.

Shel

Scientific concensus is that crustaceans do not feel pain.
I'd love Luc the food scientist to chime in on this one as well.

They do not have the brain neurons that process pain.

Remember these particular animals soak up water, then basically explode out of their shell to grow a size and develop a new shell. A lobster or crab that is 7 years old has gone through this process dozens of times, so I seriously doubt a couple seconds alive in boiling water is a big deal.

And man do they taste good!

As previously stated, they are also very violent animals in their natural domain. Having a claw and arm (sometimes both) ripped off during daily battles is not uncommom, yet they miraculously grow new ones next time they molt.

The only pain felt during a boiling death is the guilt of the person who can't keep their emotions in check.

By the way, it is also dangerous and generally illegal to cook an already dead crustacean because toxins begin to form very shortly after death, which when critical mass is achevied will harm and potential killer the person who eats it. This is why lobsters and crabs are always cooked alive and dead ones are discarded.

Cat Man

Predators mostly kill their prey quickly probably because they are really hungry! And it gives them less chance to get away. Simple as that.

As for the crabs - Norway must have too much money in its coffers to spend on crabby thoughts. How the heck....I mean c'mon ! I can tell them now - their main thought would be "OUCH!" That probably just saved a lot of dollars.

If it bothers you - chill them down in the freezer first. But who says this is comfortable either? Maybe that should be researched too :)

I dunno - things were simpler when we went crabbing on the beach in flip flops with all the relatives, got bitten toes, sunburn, then boiled off the crabs in a massive pot and had a feast, then washed off in the sea and a great day was had by all including the seagulls (except the crabs, naturally).

Shel
Ingrid whatsherface, the head of PETA, has publicly stated that she would be happy if there was a massive outbreak of FMD in the US, because it would drive meat prices up, and less people would be able to afford meat products.

She would be perfectly ok with a bunch of sick, uncomfortable animals (some die).

Several PETA activists were recently caught KILLING animals on a farm, trying to frame the owners. What amazing hypocrisy. It's a money machine and a business, not too different from organized religion in my book.

Also, PETA's mission is to eliminate humans from the top of the food chain.
Anti-Human is the highest form of InHumane in my opinion.

I am happy and feel lucky to be sitting on the top of that hill.

If a lion attacked and ate your child or pet, would you just laugh it off as natural animal or kill the friggin animal so it wouldn't harm your neighbors kids?

Cat Man

idk DC! LOL, have you ever seen a fox play with a field mouse before on Animal Planet? lol!

I bet the Norwegian crab fisherman are skeered to death that they will have an impact on all who eat crab! I hope they do, cuz it will mean there will be more for me! Yummy!!!! :D

Let's all remember that crabs, lobsters and crayfish are basically just marine bugs. Really, really tasty marine bugs. :bounce:

No one takes you to court for squashing bugs. (At least, not yet!)

It's true CastIronChef!

The lobster is closely related to the cockroach, genetically speaking.
In fact, during the european settling stages in Gulf of Maine history, prisoners were fed daily rations of lobster...breakfast, lunch and dinner, 7 days a week!
The Puritans treated it as rodent food.
It was such a disgusted food that the courts actually ruled that prisoners would eat a maximum of one lobster meal per day. It was too cruel to force them to eat more.

Many people believe that Thanksgiving and the pilgrim story is all about corn for the winter.
The truth is the friendly Indians taught the settlers how to harvest oysters and lobster in the winter months, thus preventing them from starving to death.
There was no turkey, gravy, stuffing and mashed potatoes for dinner the first night.

Cat Man

They went through the same sort of thing with salmon, too. Wasn't with prisoners, but bondservents. It was made illegal to feed them Altantic salmon more than once a day.

Of course, they were so common then that farmers harvested them with pitchforks.

What a change in a couple of centuries, hey.

Just wait until one of those little buggers grab ahold of you and then see how badly you feel dumping them into the pot! :bounce:

Do you have a citation for this claim, please, Cat Man? If true, it's an important story, yet I''m drawing a blank on news sites.

Oh brother!

Seems to me that we worry more about being gentle with our food sources than we do with our brothers and sisters whom we don't see as food sources. hmmmmm

Admittedly I'm not a biology major and don't know about the nerve systems in crabs and lobsters; but I don't know a more humane way of preparing them than plunging them into a pot of boiling water or quickly cutting them in half, but I think that humanizing animals we plan on eating is a bit off base. Seems to me that people starving or in other ways abusing animals is a bit more critical than the method of preparing a meal. As others have stated in this thread, WE are the top of the food chain, but we have the responsibility to treat all living things with respect (and that includes those living things we choose to have for dinner).

Sorry for the rant :o

Hi Mr Cat,

I am chiming in... (I would have answered sooner but I was busy yesterday and today to prep a 100 pers breakfast ... first time 100 for me... I am getting popular at my wife's work... I guess I will add catering to my repertoire eventually...)

The way I have personally resolved the dilemma of killing animals for food for me is by basing myself on the following knowledge:

All societal animals have kinship compassion (a survival trait).
Being compassionate towards everything (inanimate, vegetative and animal) is a human prerogative.
Humans are undeniably omnivores so must eat some meat.
Religion (a human activity), in the name of compassion, has struggled to resolve this issue (example: halal slaughter, kosherizing or saying grace) to purge our psyche of this perceived non-compassionate act.
Humans can anticipate danger and death (i.e. point a knife at someone's eye and get a reaction).
Animals cannot foresee or anticipate death unless it is imminent. (nobody has convinced me that a cow, a pig, etc, knows it's going to die when in line at the slaughter house)
Animals forget sudden traumatic events quickly (ex a dog hit by a car once will not be afarid of cars aftewards). Humans must deal with the unforgettable.
Animals, like humans, will change its behaviour if tortured or stressed constantly over a long period. (ex, mistreated elephant going postal during circus performance).

So for me, forcing a cow to stand in knee deep manure and feeding it corn with digestive enzyme until it gets obese enough to become bowlegged before being mature is cruel. Yet I still eat meat and deal with my choice.

Shooting the cow with a prod that goes 6 inches inside its brain then cut open the neck artery immediately afterwards is not. In a twisted way, I find that same act cruel to the people who do the slaughtering day in day out.

Dropping a crab or lobster in as big a rolling boil I can get, because I am passionate, is not. I think that by the time the crab knows it is dying it will already be dead.

I will go a step further, feeding WILLING geese that actually will eat willingly as much in 30minutes as if force fed in 5minutes, is ok for ME.

(I also believe that every CAUSE attracts some extremist... PETA is no exception)
Luc

Well all this has been alot to think on. Next time I get those lovely soft shell crabs instead of cutting the face off pulling out the dead men and ripping off the sex organs. I'm going to cover it's petite lil eye's with a silken fabric, administer some chloroform, (not colorforms) and sing it a lullaby as it wistfully drifts off into crustacean heaven. Then boil it and make a mess all over my face

Jacaranda. I'm curious, are you in The Shark Tooth Capital of the World?
If not, they named a street after you there.

See below.
The answer to your query is a couple paragraphs down

Cat Man

Sometime today, two employees of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) are expected to turn themselves over to Southampton, VA police to face charges of grand and petty larceny. Earlier this week, Carrie Beth Edwards and Andrea Florence Benoit, riding in a PETA-owned van, allegedly snatched a hunting dog from the side of the road. A witness alerted a local animal control officer who stopped the van and forced the two to hand over the kidnapped canine. The dog's radio tracking collar had been removed and thrown into the street. That collar, plus what a police detective described as "markings on the side of [the dog] indicating that it belonged to a specific person," clearly showed that it was not a stray in need of a home, but a hunting hound set roaming the countryside -- a practice that's perfectly legal in Southampton County.

Given PETA's well-documented habit of killing the animals it takes in, the captured pooch would likely have met the business end of a euthanizing needle in no time flat if law enforcement hadn't intervened. Between 1998 and 2005, the very group that claims to advocate for animals' "rights" killed over 14,400 dogs, cats, and other "companion animals." Since they only took in about 17,800 animals, that amounts to a death rate of about 80 percent -- nearly three times higher than that of the Norfolk (VA) SPCA, located less than 4 miles from PETA's headquarters. These new legal troubles couldn't have come at a worse time for PETA. On November 13, two other employees of the Virginia-based animal rights group will (finally) be tried on 22 felony counts of Animal Cruelty and 3 counts of Obtaining Property By False Pretenses. In June 2005, PETA workers Andrew Cook and Adria Hinkle were arrested in Ahoskie, North Carolina after police observed them throwing bags filled with dead dogs and cats into a trash dumpster. As witnesses from the Bertie County (NC) Animal Shelter and the Ahoskie Animal Hospital later confirmed, Cook and Hinkle had collected the animals earlier that day with the promise that PETA would find them adoptive homes.

That's scary, Cat Man :( Coming from another country where we don't really experience this sort of mad behaviour in anyway near such extremes - where is the sense in doing any of that except for the shock aspect?

It's atrocious :(

boiled soft shell crabs? we just saute them or deep fry um.
Seems like the overcrowded fish tanks in the Asian markets are less humane than the actual butchering. Think of all the poor chicks and ducklings dyed various colors sold to small children who rarely keep them living past 2 weeks...
Wonder how a bag of crawfish feel as they are being purged.....will not stop me from eating boiled crawfish.
How about a line caught fish? Anyone that's been fishing (well and actually caught one) that a fish puts up a fight....some better than others.

hmmph. farmers call it good husbandry.....animals having a decent quality of life to express their inner (pigginess, cowness, chickenness.....etc). It's ok to connect with your food, even a good thing.

If you are what you eat...

then we have a case of crabs epidemic!

:p

April

Shroomgirl
Well said.
I am not being mysoginistic in saying this, but females generally have a larger distaste than men for 'knowing' where their food came from. That includes knowledge about the slaughtering and butchering component.
Your perspective is refreshing.

Cat Man

I thought Lobsters were closer to arachnids.

I had a friend in Maine that was a fisherman and they called them 'bugs' for that reason. Looking at the number of legs and all...

Hmmm....

April

Cat Man love shroomgirls perspective. I too was taught never to kill something unless it was intended for food. We were taught how to quickly and mercifully kill for food and to aim well and true to avoid animal suffering. I was my dad's hunting dog and hunting buddy until I was about 13.

So I too share her perspective and would bet there are many women out there who understand this as well. We raised rabbits for the table during one period of my life and their names when asked were "breakfast" "lunch" and "dinner" as we were encouraged to love on them and treat them well but ultimately eat them. Which we did. To this day, rabbit is still a favorite meat of mine! :D

Now that being said, I'd like to sing a little song...

"Love to eat them crabbies! Them crabbies what I loves to eat. Bite they tiny heads off...nibble on they tiny feets!" ;)

Funny you would say women not connecting with where the meat is from......several 90+ year old women have in recent conversations talked about killing chickens, or having community hog killings. I assume chickens were more "women's work" and that the physicality of killing and scalding hogs required several men. But normally women made the sausages, cracklings, etc.....
How many times have I heard women exclaim about the "cuteness" of lambs/goats? In many cases they talk themselves out of consuming cute.....though these were not women that lived in rural places.
When did the tide turn, how did it turn? folks moving away from farms.....
Two very accomplised cooks in their late 40's came and broke down a hog with me.....both have worked in nationally known restaurants/chefs....
Inn @ Little Washington, Blackberry Inn (?< TN), top ACF Chef in USA Aiden Murphy......etc.....both said they hadn't broken down a whole large animal since school (CIA in one case).....scratch kitchens, white linen dining, high quality products......I'm scratching my head wondering why.
Disconnect between farmers/restaurants? Not knowing the quality of heirloom meats? Not being able to utelize all the critter? Or in one of my chef/owner friend's cases he doesn't want to spend the time doing it.....his menu is seasonally set and he just doesn't want to do it.

Those friends that are buying whole hogs, lambs, chickens are making money doing it......lots of money when it comes to our piggy friends.......actually lamb too, marguez sausage is showing up on numerous menus along with chops, braised bits etc.....Dr. Heidi had lamb at An American Place, normally the lamb sampler is a standard on their everchanging menu.

The women chefs I know don't have alot of qualms about knowing where their animals came from......food writers are generally another issue, most local ones I hang with have a squeemish bent, which is unfortunate.