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