Is Cooking Lobsters a Cruel Task?

Nixon Torres

ENGL 1301

Mr. De La Garza

July 18, 2016

Is cooking lobsters a cruel task?

        Lobsters have gained an important position in the human diet because its taste and nutritional components, and it have become a popular dish served from the very best restaurants to the humble family kitchens. Despite the fame of the lobsters or because of it, many activists –like PETA– have warned the cruelty in the way lobsters are cooked to satisfy our palates. One of those voices is David Foster Wallace, author of “Consider the Lobster”, who criticizes the Main Lobster Festival and describes how researchers have attributed the cause of the possible lobsters suffering to the different ways of cooking it, which make us wonder if eating lobsters and having lobsters festivals are heartless activities.

        The central issue of the discussion is based on whether these crustaceans can experience pain or not^[a] while being prepared. Prior to answer this question it is important to note that the definition of pain it is not yet widely accepted by researchers around the world, and they are still struggling on given an accepted answer. If we define pain in the way humans do feel it, however, then the answer is no; Lobsters cannot feel pain. On the contrary, if we define pain as a respond to a noxious stimulus, that is, any agent that can cause physical harm like tissue damage, then the answer is yes; Lobsters can feel pain.

Wallace supports the idea of lobsters feeling pain based on two criteria: first, the hardware required for pain-experience the animal comes equipped with; second, whether the animal demonstrates behavior associated with pain. In his article He summarizes several studies about lobsters and vertebral animals’ nervous system. He states that even though lobsters do not have a complex and centralized nervous system –which is responsible for the sense of emotional pain that humans and vertebrates do feel- they actually feel pain. “Pain reception is known to be part of a much older and more primitive system of nociceptors and prostaglandins that are managed by the brain stem and thalamus”, he says.(5). Moreover, he points out that in essence is the The other criterion is whether the animal demonstrates behavior associated with pain.

 he states that pain is not a manner of just nervous sytem, As lobsters have not a centralized brain-spine assembly as mammals -it has a chitinous exoskeleton composed of segments articulated in pairs-, they miss a cerebral cortex which is responsible for the complex processes like reasoning, language or the emotional feeling of pain; so lobsters can not feel pain in the same way humans do (5). Furthermore, he says pain reception is part of a primitive system of nociceptors and prostaglandins managed by the brain stem and the thalamus (5), so actually lobsters can feel some way of pain or stress. Indeed, to Wallace the pain lobsters feel is demonstrated by the way they behave when they are about to be boiled, and the way they desperately fight to survive.