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Do lobsters feel pain or fear as we boil them live? Do we really want to know?

Do lobsters feel pain or fear as we boil them live? Do we really want to know?

Musing about hapless crustaceans that are sacrificed daily for the sake of a good bite is probably not the most uplifting way to pass the time. However, I was thinking about a recent visit to one of those restaurants—the kind of place where you point to your desired lobster in a tank, he looks at you (I swear), and half an hour later, you pretend it is a completely different lobster that is served to you. This experience brings to mind a culinary conundrum. Do lobsters have feelings when they are dropped, live, into a pot of boiling water? Do they know what is happening to them?

This scene was played out a bit too comically in the recent, double-bio film, Julie & Julia. The character of food blogger Julie Powell cringed a little while trying to throw a few defenseless lobsters into a boiling pot, got her husband to help her, and that was it. Ha ha, next scene.

This lobster guilt delves much deeper into our culinary consciousness. I, for one, absolutely love lobster. So am I mean to send one to its death each time I order it in a live-tank restaurant? (Or, heck, shall I resist ordering it in general, since it was once alive somewhere?)

And I love foie gras, as well, but should I stop eating it because of some unsavory or downright cruel practices used in artificially fattening the birds’ livers? Should we shun veal because of the idea that baby calves should not be pent-up, awaiting our next piccata? What about poor, helpless snails that were just minding their own business before becoming a garlicky plate of escargot?

Of course, who’s to say that these dilemmas should be reserved for only the more exotic creatures, or for the more publicized animal-treatment scandals? Do we know that pigs, cows, and chickens do not feel pain, or cannot sense their impending doom at some point in the slaughter houses?

This is not about endangerment of species, like in the case of shark fin soup, or even whether our food is prepared safely, like the nouveau urging to avoid chicken from dirty, overcrowded poultry farms.

Incredibly, perhaps, but I continue to enjoy my meat, seafood, and poultry; and yes, I did watch the documentary Food, Inc. The solution here is not to simply buy “organic” or “grass fed”—that may solve our health concerns and fight Big Business in the process– but the question I am asking is, do animals feel pain and fear, particularly relating to their slaughter for the purpose of our next meal? And if so, is it or is it not the way of the world – similar to Mother Nature’s world of predator and prey?

If we were to apply a perfect argument, we could not draw the line about guilt over some meats but not all meats. If we did categorize these meats with our conscience in mind, would we break them down into staple meats and nice-to-have/shame-on-you meats? And which animals deserve to be assigned into either predicament?

© Gilat Ben-Dor. All rights reserved.

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Pate and foie gras on sale at gourmet purveyor Comtesse du Barry in Paris.

Pate and foie gras on sale at gourmet purveyor Comtesse du Barry in Paris.

Time magazine has done it again. In the same issue as Ted Kennedy’s retrospective and Michelle Obama’s hair (week of September 7, 2009), Time has included a newsworthy article by Lisa Abend on a topic that has raised a hot debate in both the dining scene and the legislature – the ethics (and legality) of the force-feeding of geese to fatten their livers for the creation of foie gras. Foie gras is goose liver that has been prepared into a silky, flavorful delicacy favored by many a European and American.

The practice of force-feeding grain through a feeding tube to hapless animals in order to engorge their liver for the human “yum” factor has garnered both media and governmental attention, to the point that force-fed foie gras has become an outlawed product in certain foodie cities, including New York City. This cultural phenomenon that has quickly translated into an industry-wide economic scenario is now being revisited, thanks to the alternative philosophies of Eduardo Sousa, a “goose whisperer” who also raises about 1,000 geese in a natural environment in Extremadura, Spain.

Sousa’s answer to the industrial-style, forced fattening of the geese is to emulate their natural environment, from how they are birthed to how they forage for their food, and thereby “fooling” them into thinking they are wild, and not domesticated. This is directly beneficial in solving the natural-but-miniscule-liver issue often resulting from the disbanding of force-feeding. Sousa explains in Abend’s article that if you convince the geese that they are, in fact, “wild” and not in captivity, they will be influenced fully by their natural instincts. And then, he explains, the weather turns cold and in their instinctual state, the geese begin gorging themselves in preparation for their (imagined) long, airborne journey ahead. Ah…so is self-gorging the solution to force-feeding, then? Either way, this may pave the way for a new look at foie gras production practices and their ramifications, from gavel to table.

The foie gras issue is a tough issue. And let me just say that I am a huge fan of the stuff. Where do we draw the line with “humane” food consumption? If we boycott foie gras because of the force-feeding, are we still any better than the next person as we continue to eat veal, or eggs from caged chickens, or pork from pigs that were treated meanly at the feed lot? Heck, do we need to just say no to leather altogether?

Where does it end? And what are your thoughts?

*Further reading: for a Q & A article about Mark Caro, author of The Foie Gras Wars (and a disturbing photo of a tube-fed duck), click here.

© Gilat Ben-Dor.

A selection of foie gras products at a Paris shop.

A selection of foie gras products at a Paris shop.

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