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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday January 13 2018, @11:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the lobster-prod dept.

You can no longer boil a lobster alive in Switzerland, unless you stun it first:

The Swiss government has ordered an end to the common culinary practice of throwing lobsters into boiling water while they are still alive, ruling that they must be knocked out before they are killed.

As part of a wider overhaul of Swiss animal protection laws, Bern said that as of 1 March, "the practice of plunging live lobsters into boiling water, which is common in restaurants, is no longer permitted". Lobsters "will now have to be stunned before they are put to death," the government order read.

According to Swiss public broadcaster RTS, only electric shock or the "mechanical destruction" of the lobster's brain will be accepted methods of stunning the animals once the new rule takes affect.

Also at BBC.


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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:11PM (31 children)

    by fyngyrz (6567) on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:11PM (#621777) Journal

    Nature is cruel. Animals eat other animals with no consideration given to pain and suffering.

    Is there a reasonable argument to be made from that that we should do no better?

    We do, after all, have a sophisticated ability to reason, and with that comes a comparatively sophisticated ability to understand the suffering of other beings.

    If we are not to moderate our behavior with reasoned empathy, in this case with attempts to ameliorate or eliminate suffering, then are we any better than animals? Is that the best we can aspire to?

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  • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:16PM (2 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:16PM (#621780)

    Considering how people treat each other all the time, we definately are just plain animals.

    • (Score: 2) by unauthorized on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:19PM

      by unauthorized (3776) on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:19PM (#621856)

      Considering how people treat each other all the time, we definately are just plain animals.

      I am a fungus Ork-kin you insensitive clod.

    • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday January 15 2018, @10:12AM

      by Wootery (2341) on Monday January 15 2018, @10:12AM (#622510)

      Not really, no. The very fact that you're able to disdainfully conclude that we're animals, hints that we're not 'just' animals.

      That we're able to exist in such relative peace is truly remarkable. Not something other species would be capable of. (If you doubt that we now live in relative peace, I leave it as an exercise to the reader to learn about how increasingly peaceful our species has become.)

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:41PM (27 children)

    by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Saturday January 13 2018, @01:41PM (#621785) Journal

    Before I say the following, I'll start by saying I'm predisposed not to make animals have unnecessary pain as well, and what you say is a reasonable intuitive argument. If it were my choice, I'd tend toward methods of killing animals for food that cause less pain.

    On the other hand, you use words like "suffer" here for animals. Is there not some sort of personification happening here? You speak of "empathizing" with animals. Do we have any idea what it is like to be an animal, to "feel" as an animal does? You mention the ability of humans to have conscious reasoning, but the assumption is usually that animals do not have the same sort of conscious self-awareness, or at least at a much more limited level (particularly for something like a lobster).

    So how can you "empathize" with someone that doesn't have conscious awareness? Is it actually "suffering" in the way that a conscious human might, or is "pain" in this case more akin to a sort of "reflex" reaction... We observe the lobster flinch or squeal or whatever, but could that just be like a doctor hitting your knee and your leg flying up? From an evolutionary perspective, the lobster's flinching could help it avoid death, thereby creating more offspring... It doesn't necessarily mean it "feels pain" or even that nervous impulses that cause avoidance are endowed with the kind of thing that humans would self-reflect on as "pain" let alone "suffering."

    If animals' "pain" responses are sometimes more like unconscious human reflexes and less like conscious "pain" and "suffering" (this is at least possible in some instances), do we still have a duty toward your imagined "empathy"? Or should we merely treat the animal like any other physical system or tool or whatever, that responds according to basic physical laws?

    (My personal opinion here is to side with you at least somewhat and say -- without clear evidence, we should ASSUME there might be some sort of conscious-like ability to reflect on pain and maybe even "suffering" in many animals, so we should err on the side of trying to cause less physical responses that appear to LOOK like they are akin to human "pain" responses. But until we can probe the "consciousness" (such as it may be) of a lobster, I'm not sure we have any good to reason to make such a blanket assumption toward "empathy.")

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by turgid on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:00PM (3 children)

      by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:00PM (#621788) Journal

      You make some good points, but some animals have more capacity for human-like thought than others. For example, the great apes, monkeys, whales and dolphins, many birds such as corvids and parrots, octopuses, dogs etc. The harder we look, the more surprises we find. We should err on the side of caution.

      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:26PM (2 children)

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:26PM (#621859)

        Great apes? I guess that's why I'm not supposed to cook and eat my neighbor? Except, he's not so great an ape. His daughter, though - she's pretty great if you ask me! She doesn't even need cooking!

    • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:02PM (7 children)

      by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:02PM (#621790) Journal

      Oh, and to be clear, I understand we have the means to look at "pain receptors" in animals and notice physiological similarities to human pain receptors, etc. The question is not whether animals are capable of having a nervous impulses, but what it means for beings with no consciousness or limited consciousness of whatever to "feel pain," "experience suffering,"... and whether it is meaningful to talk of "empathizing" with them. If their experience of sensations is qualitatively different or less "meaningful" or whatever, do the same moral duties apply that we'd apply to treatment of conscious humans?

      • (Score: 5, Insightful) by lx on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:39PM (2 children)

        by lx (1915) on Saturday January 13 2018, @02:39PM (#621802)

        On the other hand, I have no hard guarantee that you are capable of suffering in a meaningful way, after all you might just be a bunch of spinal reflexes imitating consciousness. Does that mean that I can drop you in boiling water without feeling empathy?

        • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:29PM

          by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @05:29PM (#621861) Journal

          Empathy. OK, I'm dropped into the boiling water. There is a flash of pain, then a warm fuzzy feeling, and then nothing. That's why they drop the lobster in the pot head first - his brain solidifies not-quite-instantly. Crack an egg into boiling water. Or, don't even crack it - just drop a raw egg into boiling water. The shell will almost certainly burst, and all that protein will kinda swirl out, already solidified. If we're going to empathize, you gotta really empathize.

        • (Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:32PM

          by AthanasiusKircher (5291) on Thursday January 18 2018, @04:32PM (#624191) Journal

          No "hard guarantee," true... If you are willing to go down the road to solipsism.

          My assumption when I posted initially in a thread about philosophy is that some here might be familiar with basic philosophical literature on this issue, such as Thomas Nagel's seminar essay, "What is it like to be a bat?"

          There are certainly objections to his essay, but my main point was about the use of terms like "empathy" and "suffering" which presume an ability of a human mind to comprehend what it may be like to experience the subjective world as a lobster might. It seems like a reasonable supposition that a lobster experiences "pain" and on that argument alone we may alter our behavior toward them. But claiming that we can feel "empathy" or understand how exactly they might experience "suffering" is a much greater epistemological and psychological leap. That was my point.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 13 2018, @10:25PM (2 children)

        by frojack (1554) on Saturday January 13 2018, @10:25PM (#621960) Journal

        The question is not whether animals are capable of having a nervous impulses, but what it means for beings with no consciousness or limited consciousness of whatever to "feel pain," "experience suffering,"

        Nervous impulse usually means a flight or fight response. Not necessarily screaming.

        Lobsters an crabs squeal when they hit the hot water. It upsets some people.
        So the question becomes will they squeal less when you hit them with a stun gun before they go in the pot?

        --
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        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:23AM (1 child)

          by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @02:23AM (#622053)

          Steam escaping the shell

          • (Score: 2) by Pav on Sunday January 14 2018, @06:58AM

            by Pav (114) on Sunday January 14 2018, @06:58AM (#622110)

            If they're anything like painted crayfish on the great barrier reef the squeel is meant to attracts sharks, so perhaps it's like the light flashes of deep sea creatures. The predator of your predator is your friend.

      • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday January 15 2018, @10:23AM

        by Wootery (2341) on Monday January 15 2018, @10:23AM (#622514)

        It seems pretty clear that other species of ape must experience pain at least somewhat similarly to how we do - we're just so similar.

        The difference in intelligence does indeed hint (though it's not a bullet-proof association) that their form of consciousness is probably less rich than our own, but I see little reason to entertain the idea that, say, gorillas can't suffer in a meaningful sense.

        As we stray further and further from our fellow primates, the question becomes harder to answer. How about ants? Jellyfish? Those damnably delicious lobsters? There are important differences. They still respond to physical harm, and they even respond to some pain-killers used to treat humans, but they're far less intelligent.

        Additionally their hardware architecture is quite different - as I understand it, lobsters have a number of independent 'ganglia', rather than one central brain. Whether that should impact our estimations of their level of consciousness and ability to suffer, isn't obvious.

        (Related question: are Blade Runner's 'simulants' conscious? Are you going to tell me they can't be conscious simply because their braints are made of silicon rather than grey mush?)

    • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Immerman on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:31PM (2 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:31PM (#621885)

      One of the indicators used to determine "suffering" in other species is excessive grooming of injuries. Dogs, cats, horses, etc. will worry at injuries or amputations for prolonged periods after the damage is done. Insects on the other hand will just vary their stride until the damage is compensated for. Lobsters fall into the grooming category.

      As for speculating on whether other animals actually feel pain (we are after all just particularly smart animals - there's a large and growing body of evidence that pretty much everything else we credit as "human" is actually shared by many other species) - I would challenge you to prove that you yourself feel pain, and don't just behave in a manner I associate with how I react to pain. Can't be done. And in the absence of an objective way to measure subjective experience, the compassionate person will give others the benefit of the doubt, and do what they can to avoid needless suffering.

      And it's not like zapping a lobster's head with a taser before tossing it in the pot is going to raise the price appreciably.

      • (Score: 2) by frojack on Saturday January 13 2018, @10:33PM (1 child)

        by frojack (1554) on Saturday January 13 2018, @10:33PM (#621964) Journal

        If it stops the lobster from squealing that's all you need from the restaurant, right?

        Have you reduced the lobster's pain, or merely prevented it from squealing?

        Most people do not scream from a stun gun shock (because they are incapacitated) - but they report it to be very painful.
        Still, you can buy them on Amazon beginning under $10. Why? Because they are said to be non lethal.

        --
        No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
        • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Immerman on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:03AM

          by Immerman (3985) on Sunday January 14 2018, @05:03AM (#622098)

          Most people don't get a stun-gun shock directly across the brain. And for good reason.

          I suspect you don't stop it from squealing, as I suspect that's the same outgassing phenomena as for crab. The point is to disrupt/destroy neural function beforeboiling them alive. Does it actually work? I would hope so, but in a way that's actually a secondary concern. Once you've established that they should get a merciful death, then if it's shown that the specific method used doesn't actually grant one, then you can change the method. Better a misguided attempt at compassion than a ruthless disregard for suffering - mistakes can be corrected.

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:48PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @06:48PM (#621892)

      Who are we to judge what can or cannot "suffer"? We are barely grasping how the brain works even today.
      It is well within our power and therefore reasonable to inflict as little suffering as possible upon other creatures.
      Maybe someday we'll be able to prove that lobsters are in fact capable of complex thought or suffering. We've already proven as much in cows.
      I'm personally very happy to see Switzerland take a small step toward being just a little more considerate towards our fellow creatures.

    • (Score: 4, Insightful) by fyngyrz on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:16PM (7 children)

      by fyngyrz (6567) on Saturday January 13 2018, @08:16PM (#621919) Journal

      On the other hand, you use words like "suffer" here for animals. Is there not some sort of personification happening here?

      No. The observation that animals can suffer comes from my many decades of direct and careful observation of, and interaction with, cats, dogs, other pets, farm animals and humans.

      Do we have any idea what it is like to be an animal, to "feel" as an animal does?

      We are animals. In any case, we certainly have enough of an idea. Non-human animals react pretty much the same way we do when injured, within the limits of their ability to express themselves.

      the assumption is usually that animals do not have the same sort of conscious self-awareness, or at least at a much more limited level (particularly for something like a lobster).

      That assumption is outright baseless WRT to capacity to suffer, and those who use it that way, as a foundation for their actions, are operating without a clue.

      We don't know in any detail at what level some form of consciousness is no longer present. Clearly, for cats and dogs, consciousness is present; it seems exceedingly unlikely that it is present in a blade of grass, but entirely possible that it is present in a lobster, which interacts with its environment in a much more sophisticated manner. The bottom line though, is that we don't know, and so my takeaway is that we should assume it is, so as to not cause needless conscious suffering. All of which doesn't address the possibility that consciousness may not even be required in order to suffer.

      So how can you "empathize" with someone that doesn't have conscious awareness?

      Very easily: You start with the certain knowledge that you can't be sure it isn't aware of its circumstance, and then you act in order to prevent yourself from causing the potential problem. If you're in a hotel room with a gun, you won't shoot a gun through the wall, because although you're not sure there's someone in the path of the bullet, you don't know, and so you elect not to take the chance of shooting anyone. This is simple sanity based on lack of knowledge. Same thing for animal suffering: if you don't know, you should not act in such a way that your lack of knowledge corrupts your actions.

      If animals' "pain" responses are sometimes more like unconscious human reflexes and less like conscious "pain" and "suffering" (this is at least possible in some instances), do we still have a duty toward your imagined "empathy"? Or should we merely treat the animal like any other physical system or tool or whatever, that responds according to basic physical laws?

      It comes down to knowing, or not knowing. Until we know – and we most certainly do not for lower animals, although we just as certainly do for higher ones - the high ground is clearly not to do things that would cause suffering if the animal actually has the capacity to suffer. Don't shoot through hotel room walls.

      until we can probe the "consciousness" (such as it may be) of a lobster, I'm not sure we have any good to reason to make such a blanket assumption toward "empathy.")

      I say we do have a good reason. If we don't make that assumption, we may be acting in an evil manner - shooting the person in the next hotel room. That's not okay. If we refrain, then we are sure to not be acting in an evil manner in this regard - just we are sure not to shoot someone on the other side of a hotel room wall if we never fire a gun in a hotel room.

      If it turns out that in fact, there is no consciousness present in some set of lower animal life forms, no harm was done by refraining from damaging them while they are (were) living. Turns out that there is (was) consciousness, much less harm was done. So clearly, at least to me, the only correct path is to refrain from causing living animals damage.

      Whereas if you do damage them, if they are not conscious, no harm done; if they are conscious, then harm was done.

      So the former approach is clean regardless of outcome; the latter clean in only one of the two outcomes. That leaves only one certain path free of having been an asshole, and that's the one I choose.

      • (Score: 2) by turgid on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:32PM

        by turgid (4318) Subscriber Badge on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:32PM (#621941) Journal
      • (Score: 1) by Barenflimski on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:15AM

        by Barenflimski (6836) on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:15AM (#622004)

        Well Spoken

      • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday January 15 2018, @12:03PM (4 children)

        by Wootery (2341) on Monday January 15 2018, @12:03PM (#622535)

        Good post. My one issue:

        If it turns out that in fact, there is no consciousness present in some set of lower animal life forms, no harm was done by refraining from damaging them while they are (were) living.

        Not really. Our efforts to avoid cruelty are costly. Free range food is far more expensive, and consumes more land, etc. If our tradeoffs are grounded on what turns out to be the false assumption that chickens can suffer, then we've cost ourselves in the process.

        (I'm ignoring that free range is higher quality, but nitpicking the specific example isn't the point. Ultimately, there's a tradeoff going on here.)

        • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday January 15 2018, @07:01PM (3 children)

          by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday January 15 2018, @07:01PM (#622664) Journal

          You're talking about an entirely different kind of harm. My position is that imposing suffering on A cannot be excused by earning, or saving, money by B.

          "Tradeoffs" at the non-consensual expense of others are actually exercises of abuse. To the extent they can be avoided, they should be avoided.

          • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday January 15 2018, @08:46PM (2 children)

            by Wootery (2341) on Monday January 15 2018, @08:46PM (#622718)

            You're talking about an entirely different kind of harm.

            Not really. If our efforts to minimise animal suffering are in fact misguided, then we've paid a human price for nothing. That's all I'm saying.

            I've seen a very similar fallacy with global warming: Maybe man-made climate-change is real, maybe not. If it is, we'll be glad we acted. If not, we lose nothing.

            It's nonsense, of course. We pay a huge price in our efforts against man-made climate change, such as insisting that third-world countries don't build coal-powered power plants. (Of course, the important point in that case is that there's no real question about man-made climate-change anyway.)

            My position is that imposing suffering on A cannot be excused by earning, or saving, money by B.

            How on Earth can you think I was suggesting otherwise? Are you deliberately talking past me? I quoted you very specifically.

            To the extent they can be avoided, they should be avoided.

            Obviously... Did you not read what I wrote?

            • (Score: 2) by fyngyrz on Monday January 15 2018, @10:56PM (1 child)

              by fyngyrz (6567) on Monday January 15 2018, @10:56PM (#622823) Journal

              If our efforts to minimise animal suffering are in fact misguided, then we've paid a human price for nothing.

              I'll bite. Elaborate, please: What human price will we have paid?

              It's nonsense, of course. We pay a huge price in our efforts against man-made climate change, such as insisting that third-world countries don't build coal-powered power plants.

              It is idiocy to build coal-fired power plants at this point in time, or to encourage same, knowing what we now know about the consequences - quite aside from the speculations about the potential consequences of rising CO2 levels - that coal burning brings about, as well as the presently growing ability to go in other directions.

              100 years ago, we really didn't know that coal was as bad as it is. Now we do. The human price we've paid was based on ignorance initially, and social momentum later. We should stop paying it ASAP. We certainly shouldn't encourage others to follow in those footsteps.

              I don't disagree that there are human costs lurking in this issue, but abandoning coal-fired power generation isn't one of them. That's a gold-plated benefit. Those countries would be far better off building power infrastructure using modern decentralized, low ongoing-pollution generating tech such as solar. For one thing, the infrastructure costs are largely decentralized, or can be, and for another, that means that they are much more easily approached incrementally, and for another, they are much faster, albeit inherently uneven, to establish.

              What we should be doing, and really aren't doing near as much of as we should, is developing energy storage solutions faster. Lithium batteries aren't going to be doing anyone any favors in the long run, for example.

              How on Earth can you think I was suggesting otherwise?

              That's how I read it, honestly. I went back, and that's still how I read it. You are welcome to elaborate and correct my misunderstanding(s.) I do not claim to always accurately get the point of everything I read.

              • (Score: 2) by Wootery on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:50AM

                by Wootery (2341) on Tuesday January 16 2018, @09:50AM (#623058)

                What human price

                Fewer people will be eating what they like - lobster - now that this law has passed. The chefs that continue to offer it will be inconvenienced by the new requirements. If the assumption that lobsters can suffer, is mistaken, then there's been a small human cost paid for nothing.

                Some people like wearing fur, and hunting foxes with a pack of blood-crazed dogs, but we stop them doing both in our effort to minimise animal suffering.

                Some British vegetarians and Hindus got awfully worked-up [theguardian.com] about the use of a microscopic amount of animal fat in the UK's new paper money. Their displeasure is, really, the result of the assumption that animals have moral status.

                To be absolutely clear, I think it would be absurd to suggest that animals don't have moral status. My point is that you seem to think that significant movements like this are otherwise totally cost-free. Not so. It would in many ways be far easier for society if animals weren't conscious.

                Cruel farming practices are the most economically efficient. Sadly we've not really pushed the trade-off very far there, as many factory-farmed animals have an awful existence.

                We certainly shouldn't encourage others to follow in those footsteps.

                I thought I was clear that this was just an example. I also thought I was clear that I'm not actually pro-coal.

                I don't care about the nuances of global power-generation, my point is that if the downsides of coal power somehow turned out not to exist, we'd have been really holding back a number of countries in insisting they reject coal power. The same applies to animal welfare.

    • (Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:58PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 13 2018, @09:58PM (#621952)

      On the other hand, you use words like "suffer" here for animals. Is there not some sort of personification happening here? You speak of "empathizing" with animals. Do we have any idea what it is like to be an animal, to "feel" as an animal does?

      On the other hand, you use words like "suffer" here for jews. Is there not some sort of personification happening here? You speak of "empathizing" with jews. Do we have any idea what it is like to be a jew, to "feel" as a jew does?

      Careful there, champ.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:22AM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday January 14 2018, @12:22AM (#622007)

      why should animal suffering be different than human, which can merely have more abstract reasons for suffering? expanding your objection why should we treat sociopaths or schizoid or narcissists or aspergers like our own? it is documented they don't feel the same way normies do....

    • (Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Sunday January 14 2018, @10:35PM

      by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Sunday January 14 2018, @10:35PM (#622300)

      On the other hand, you use words like "suffer" here for animals. Is there not some sort of personification happening here? You speak of "empathizing" with animals. Do we have any idea what it is like to be an animal, to "feel" as an animal does? You mention the ability of humans to have conscious reasoning, but the assumption is usually that animals do not have the same sort of conscious self-awareness, or at least at a much more limited level (particularly for something like a lobster).

      I'm an animal, and I suffer from pain. I assume that suffering is as much an evolutionary response to pain as a reflex from a doctor hitting my knee with a hammer.