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.

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[–] 151 points 10 months ago (93 children)

It frightens me that we can't 100% agree that boiling a living thing that feels pain, is bad.

Humans are the worst.

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  • [–] 27 points 10 months ago

    Vegans don't care about the natural world with regards to suffering caused by the natural world itself. That's just how things are.

    Vegans instead are more interested in suffering caused by humans inflicted on the natural world. This suffering can be more or less wicked than what you'd find out in the wild.

    Big distinction.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    Inb4 plants feel just as much pain, just differently

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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (6 children)

    Yeah but they are masochists and they like it.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (5 children)
  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    In that moral framework ig fruits and veggies would be fine since the plant wants us to eat it

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  • [–] 40 points 10 months ago (43 children)

    Most killing involves pain, all meat requires killing.

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  • [–] 32 points 10 months ago (29 children)

    Let's suppose that you actually genuinely care about reducing the amount of plant suffering in the world. If this is the case, surely you would be vegan, because 3/4 of our total agricultural land is used to grow plants to support animal agriculture. (Since grass feels pain just like soybeans do, this includes pasture land.) So far fewer plants would be killed if everyone was vegan.

    Of course, you don't actually live your life in a manner consistent with believing plants feel pain. I don't think anyone would think twice about swerving into some flowers to avoid a dog in the street for fear of causing suffering to the flowers.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (14 children)

    How so? Have you seen the energy pyramid diagram?

    The one I am referring to is specifically figure 2

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (9 children)

    While this likely pans out with historical methods of meat production, alongside historical quantities of meat consumption, it breaks down when scaled up.

    This would signal towards a reduced meat consumption across a population. On an individual level, removing meat from the diet would be beneficial to offset those who aren't reducing.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (7 children)

    They aren't producing for funsies. If people are buying less, they're going to produce less in order to maximize their profit. If they don't ramp down production in response to reduced consumption, they are losing money.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago (5 children)

    Lots of businesses have scaled down production when demand for their product has declined. Lines literally get discontinued if demand drops low enough.

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  • [–] 3 points 10 months ago* (3 children)

    Yes, because demand is increasing.

    If demand were decreasing, then the chart would look different.

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (8 children)

    Cmon let's be real, again this is a very simple trophic levels thing. If you truly care about the suffering of all the field mice and bugs and whatever being killed in soybean monocultures, and their other various environmental harms, then surely you would be vegan, because 75% of all soybeans grown globally are used as animal feed. (Source)

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    United States Department of Agriculture. PSD Online. Available at: https://apps.fas.usda.gov/psdonline/app/index.html#/app/advQuery.{/ref}

    The majority (77%) of the world’s soy is fed to livestock for meat and dairy production. 7% is fed directly to animals as soybeans, but the remainder is first processed into soybean ‘cake’.{ref}Soybean cake (sometimes referred to as soybean meal) is a high-protein feed made from the pressurization, heat treatment, and extraction processing of soybeans. The oil is extracted from the soybeans to leave a protein-rich product.

    Per the source above, although it's fair if you missed it because it's in the footnotes

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  • [–] 2 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I understand the core of your argument: "animals can eat parts of the plant that humans can't, so it's most efficient to use those as animal feed instead of wasting them." But this is not really engaging with the source I posted above, showing that, indeed, farmed animals are directly fed only 7% of all raw soybeans produced in the world, but 69% of all soybeans are specifically produced to be turned into high-protein processed animal feed, for a total of 76%.

    From your previous comments though, it doesn't really seem like you're engaging in good faith. Feel free to have the last word, have a great day

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (5 children)

    all meat requires killing.

    Technically not true... You could amputate and eat part of an animal without killing it

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  • [–] 8 points 10 months ago

    A TV reporter became lost on the back roads and stopped at a farm to get directions. As he was talking to the farmer he noticed a pig with a wooden leg. “This could be a great story for the Six O’Clock News.  How did that pig lose his leg?” he asked the farmer. “Well”, said the farmer, “that’s a very special pig. One night not too long ago we had a fire start in the barn, and that pig squealed so loud and long that he woke everyone, and by the time we got there he had herded all the other animals out of the barn. Saved them all.”

    “And that was when he hurt his leg?” asked the journalist anxious for a story.  “Nope, he pulled through that just fine.” said the farmer. “Though a while later, I was back in the woods when a bear attacked me. Well, sir, that pig was nearby and he came running and rammed that bear from behind and then chased him off. He saved me for sure.”

    “Wow! So the bear injured his leg then?” questioned the reporter.  “No. He came away without a scratch. Though a few days later, my tractor turned over in a ditch and I was knocked unconscious. Well, that pig dove into the ditch and pulled me out before I got cut up in the machinery.”  “Ahh! So his leg got caught under the tactor?” asked the journalist.  “Noooo. We both walked away from that one.” says the farmer.

    “So how did he get the wooden leg?” asked the journalist.  “Well”, the farmer replied, “A pig that good you don't eat all at once!"

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  • [–] 10 points 10 months ago

    Yes, and we humans clearly live outside of human societies and thus we shouldn't hold ourselves to human moral standards.

    It's cute how we set ourselves apart from nature, and use terms like "humane" to mean better, refined, less brutal, yet the moment that notion might even slightly inconvenience us, then we're just animals.

    Humanity? Pfft, fuck that! We're just animals. We're like cats, or dolphins!

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  • [–] 19 points 10 months ago (30 children)

    Have you ever seen felines hunting? They are fucking psychos by your standards.

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  • [+] 41 points 10 months ago (12 children)
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  • [+] 32 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (10 children)
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  • [+] 13 points 10 months ago (3 children)
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  • [–] 6 points 10 months ago (3 children)

    To be very crass, animals also rape other animals, and I hope to god that you will not use "but we are animals" as an argument there as well.

    We are different from other animals in that we are moral agents. We can know the difference between good and bad. That makes us responsible to act upon that difference, too.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    I don't know what sort of gotcha you're trying to make. Yes those humans are immoral moral actors.

    And also, no, I do not adhere to moral relativism, that is a position I outright reject. I definitively think that there are moral positions more "correct" than others. That is your position. Not mine.

    Does that make me "better" than other animals? "Better" in what sense, though? Better in terms of discerning right from wrong and able to think about these abstract concepts? Yes. Abstract thinking is something that humans are quite uniquely better at, as far as we know. Better as in having more moral value, though? No I would not say so. If an animal has capacity for suffering, then that animal has a moral worth. And we should avoid causing it suffering if possible.

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago (14 children)

    Cats are neither human, nor do they boil their kills just because they can. Cats kill, yes. Cats are murderous little fuckers, yes.

    However the issue the above poster is talking about isn't about killing of whatever. Or about eating meat. Their point was about doing it in as humane a way as possible.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago

    There's some kind of wisdom and (albeit self-serving) kindness to how felines kill things (sometimes). Whereby they get their prey to settle into their fate, and calm down, before they go in for the kill. Seemingly because all that adrenaline and muscle tension makes the meat taste worse, and impairs their mood and feels after eating it.

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