Boiling lobsters alive to be banned in England amid animal cruelty crackdown
www.theguardian.com
Move is part of a long-awaited Labour strategy including outlawing hen cages and ending puppy farming

Boiling lobsters while they are alive and conscious will be banned as part of a government strategy to improve animal welfare in England.

Government ministers say that “live boiling is not an acceptable killing method” for crustaceans and alternative guidance will be published.

The practice is already illegal in Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand. Animal welfare charities say that stunning lobsters with an electric gun or chilling them in cold air or ice before boiling them is more humane.

  • Coleslaw4145@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    2 days ago

    We’ve created way too many animals

    Thats not the animals fault though. Why should they pay the price for our mistake?

    Sterilization is the least inhumane way out of this mess.

    You’re bascially suggesting that we wipe out entire species of livestock because humans deem their existance is no longer necessary.

    Ecosystems can’t accomadate them in the wild yes, but without farming neither can the human economy.

    So the only option left is extinction via sterilization.

    And that just sounds like animal murder with extra steps.

    • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
      1·
      2 days ago

      So, what is your proposal? This is not a rhetorical question, I’ve thought and read about it for a while and it seems to me like the least bad practical option, because the others are:

      • Kill them directly (way more suffering, seems worse)
      • Release them into the wild, ensuring most die from hunger or predators and destroy entire ecosystems (seems worse to me as well)
      • Keep them in the same hellhole farms where they already are, but stop insemination and ensure sex separation (seems the same as sterilization but with another way to remove autonomy)
      • Magically build shelters for them and let them reproduce freely while providing them with food. This is (1) pretty much impossible economically, (2) clearly not sustainable because it will just result in an explosion in their numbers, without a clear plan to provide food for them long-term.
        • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          So, keep the cycle of exploitation and murder going, but with slightly less shitty conditions? It’s an improvement for sure, but doesn’t solve the fundamental issue with murdering animals.

          • Coleslaw4145@lemmy.worldEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            but doesn’t solve the fundamental issue with murdering animals.

            Neither does yours. Your solution is essentially murder all the animals until there are none left to murder.

            At least this way the animals wouldn’t be wiped off the face of the Earth.

            • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
              1·
              1 day ago

              My solution involves murdering exactly 0 animals.

              Letting animals live out their lives until peaceful death is the opposite of murder.

              Your solution involves a continuous cycle of exploitation and murder with no feasible end in sight.

                • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
                  1·
                  24 hours ago

                  No, it literally isn’t?

                  Murder is the process of intentionally killing a living being.

                  The entire species is not a living being. Extinction of a species can come from murder of all its individuals, but it doesn’t have to. I’m literally proposing a solution under which there is no murder happening at all, and all individuals live out their lives happily until peaceful death, more or less.

                  Extinction of a species is not a problem by itself, especially when the members of that species don’t have the necessary mental abilities to understand the concepts of species or extinction. It can be a problem if it causes ecosystem failure, which then results in unnecessary suffering and death. But it’s not a problem by itself.

                  What you are proposing (keeping the animal farming industry going) will involve a lot of murder of animals, whichever way you structure it, or however many “animal welfare” stickers you put on the end products.

                  • Coleslaw4145@lemmy.worldEnglish
                    1·
                    24 hours ago

                    Murder is the process of intentionally killing a living being.

                    It literally isnt.

                    The definition of murder is when one human being kills another human being. It has nothing to do with animals.

                    So if you’re going to make up your own meaning for it and apply the term loosely to make your argument sound more dramatic then I can too.