# Why dont they FEED those poor doomed lobsters? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [September 8, 2011, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581 "2011-09-08T04:33:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 14\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![sitchensis](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sitchensis/32/4892_2.png) [@sitchensis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sitchensis)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2011, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/41 "2011-09-10T03:42:03Z")
Oysters are kept alive, that’s what keeps the shell closed Clams are kept in a tub of cold saltwater and purged on cornmeal, they are filter feeders, by ingesting the cornmeal on the front side it forces all the shit out the backside ---
**Author:** ![Lynn\_Bodoni](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e47c2d/32.png) [@Lynn\_Bodoni](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lynn_Bodoni)\ **Post date:** [September 10, 2011, 4:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/42 "2011-09-10T04:18:00Z")
You aren’t supposed to cook dead oysters, and if you’re eating them raw, you’re not supposed to eat dead oysters. I might not know much about shellfish, but I DO know that. ---
**Author:** ![lavenderviolet](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/cdc98d/32.png) [@lavenderviolet](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lavenderviolet)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2011, 1:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/43 "2011-09-15T01:53:31Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > You can wash the shit off. It seems cruel to me too. > > I was watching an episode of _Chopped_ last night on Food Network. They got live, soft shell crabs to work with. A couple of them them floured the things and threw them on flat pans and started frying them while they were still alive. That was fucked up. They were waving their legs and claws around, and nobody acted like there was anything unusual or disturbing about it. I say stick a knife in the brain, man. Act like human beings. I agree with you. If one must kill and eat animals, I think there is an ethical obligation to at least do what we can to avoid causing suffering to the creatures. Strange that many people find it less disturbing to boil a lobster alive than to try to kill it instantly with a knife. I have never cooked lobster (I am a vegetarian and seafood was always my least favorite form of meat even when I did eat it) but if the description in “Consider the Lobster” of what it is like is accurate the practice of boiling them alive seems especially disturbing to me: > [@](#): > > However stuporous the lobster is from the trip home, for instance, it tends to come alarmingly to life when placed in boiling water. If you’re tilting it from a container into the steaming kettle, the lobster will sometimes try to cling to the container’s sides or even to hook its claws over the kettle’s rim like a person trying to keep from going over the edge of a roof. And worse is when the lobster’s fully immersed. Even if you cover the kettle and turn away, you can usually hear the cover rattling and clanking as the lobster tries to push it off. Or the creature’s claws scraping the sides of the kettle as it thrashes around. The lobster, in other words, behaves very much as you or I would behave if we were plunged into boiling water (with the obvious exception of screaming). ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2011, 11:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/44 "2011-09-15T11:11:30Z")
Do you kill cockroaches? ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [September 15, 2011, 1:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/45 "2011-09-15T13:07:59Z")
> [@BigT](#): > > Do you kill cockroaches? Only when hungry ---
**Author:** ![Dragonsgait](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b782af/32.png) [@Dragonsgait](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dragonsgait)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 2:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/46 "2012-02-10T02:50:20Z")
Poor lobsters starve then await a pot of boiling water. Why not have 2 tanks. Just like the frozen food, in the morning when the stor or restaurant opens, take the lobsters out of the tank they eat and crap in and put them in the clean tanks. Then clean the dirty tanks and then at night, put them back in. Alternate them between tanks. It’s not rocket science. ---
**Author:** ![zoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zoid/32/336_2.png) [@zoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/zoid)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/47 "2012-02-10T03:24:22Z")
The issue isn’t only the tank but the feces in the lobsters digestive tract which just happens to run the length of the tail. ---
**Author:** ![blondebear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/blondebear/32/1022_2.png) [@blondebear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/blondebear)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 3:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/48 "2012-02-10T03:40:10Z")
> [@Taomist](#): > > This thread makes me at once drool and grimace. > > It’s not a pretty sight. Ha! For some reason your comment brought to mind the monster from [The Black Scorpion](http://www.tvfoodanddrink.com/pics_july11/black_scorpion_one.jpg) (notice the drool?). I mean, it’s kind of like a giant lobster, ain’t it? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Gary\_T](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/3ec8ea/32.png) [@Gary\_T](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_T)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/49 "2012-02-10T04:23:16Z")
> [@Dragonsgait](#): > > Poor lobsters starve… No, they don’t actually. See post #23. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/50 "2012-02-10T04:33:26Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Aren’t you supposed to feed oysters and snails a diet of cornmeal for a couple of days before you eat them? If you eat them right away, their taste will be affected by the food they’ve recently eaten. You’re not really feeding them cornmeal. When you wash them you throw in cornmeal, black pepper, or other substances that act as a general irritant and make them flush out their systems. Lobsters can be fed, and kept in tanks for a very long time. And of course they may shit in the tank whether you feed them or not because they often come in with their intestine full. Their claws are pegged or bound so they don’t fight with each other. ---
**Author:** ![Rich\_Mann](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/ce73a5/32.png) [@Rich\_Mann](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rich_Mann)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 9:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/51 "2012-02-10T09:55:11Z")
> [@Incubus](#): > > They need to play that kirk vs spock gladitorial fight music too. -snip- Ah, yes! The [Dodecapodian national anthem](http://www.comedycentral.com/videos/index.jhtml?videoId=147744&title=claw-plagh). How appropriate. Dr. Zoidberg would approve. ---
**Author:** ![tr0psn4j](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/958977/32.png) [@tr0psn4j](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tr0psn4j)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/52 "2012-02-10T17:56:33Z")
> [@Lynn\_Bodoni](#): > > This whole thread reminds me of “Les Poissons” from The Little Mermaid. Such a fun scene. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BigT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bigt/32/12044_2.png) [@BigT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BigT)\ **Post date:** [February 10, 2012, 10:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/53 "2012-02-10T22:04:39Z")
> [@Namkcalb](#): > > Only when hungry Well, that’s the logic Alton Brown uses. Lobsters are closer to cockroaches than any of the mammals or birds we normally eat. Killing a lobster is not much different than killing a cockroach, by his estimation ---
**Author:** ![missinformation](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d07c76/32.png) [@missinformation](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/missinformation)\ **Post date:** [February 12, 2012, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581/54 "2012-02-12T00:46:40Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > That’s how I was taught to kill them anyway. It seemed to work. They stopped moving. Then you snip the face off. > > My maternal grandfather was a Cajun chef in Louisiana, and was kind of a character. A Naval vet of WWII, survivor of both Normandy and the Pacific theater, drinker, crusty ne’er do well and amazing cook. He told me a story once about working as a chef on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He was making frog legs. He had a passel of live frogs. He was out on the deck somewhere, chopping the legs off the live frogs, dropping the legs in a bucket and tossing the remainder of the legless, still living frogs on the deck. He said a woman who worked on the rig in some kind of adminstrative capacity or something (I don’t remember exactly what, this is a story I heard 30 years ago) saw the hapless frogs flopping around on the deck and got very upset. He said he thought she must have been bothered by the mess the frogs were making on the deck, so he started scooping them up with a shovel and tossing them overboard, off the rig and into the water, where they, of course, sank and drowned. Instead of alleviating this woman’s distress it only made her more upset. My grandfather told this story with a sort of puzzlement, as though he didn’t understand what she was upset about. To him, those frogs might as well have been crusts of bead or apple cores. They were refuse, food waste. He cleared them off the deck, so what was she so upset about? This so reminds me of the George Carlin comment about frog’s legs… ~"Frog’s legs. I can never order them. I keep wondering- What did they do with the rest of the frog? What do they do? Do they give them little dollies and send them back out onto the street to beg? You know? Try to return them to a normal life? The trouble is, the “Dollies for Froggies” program is underfunded. Boy, they’re doing something with them. You never see it on the menu: ‘Frog Torso.’ " ~ [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-dont-they-feed-those-poor-doomed-lobsters/595581.md?page=2)