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.

  • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    17 hours 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·
        12 hours 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·
          12 hours 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.