Michael Mosbacher

In defence of cruel foods

Outlawing these delicacies will do little for animal welfare

(Photo by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images)

Fishmongers are an endangered species in London. Thankfully, 15 minutes walk across Westminster from The Spectator’s offices there is an excellent fish stall on Tachbrook Street market in Pimlico. Jonathan Norris’s stall — much frequented by 1990s Tory politicians — does a thriving trade in live lobsters. He will happily boil the crustaceans for you in his lobster kettle, but buying them alive is more fun, especially if you have children in tow. At this time of year the lobsters are Cornish; in the winter live lobster flown in from Canada will have to do.

Buying — and then boiling — live lobsters is a sure way of getting children interested in their next meal, at least it is with my two boys. Seeing the crustaceans turning from dark blue to vibrant red and then the process of splitting the beast in half and cracking the shell offers more entertainment — the pleasures of lobster for adult and child alike are as much to do with the animal’s aesthetics as the actual taste of the flesh. Slaughtering lobsters is certainly a distraction from YouTube and other contemporary childhood pursuits. All this can be had for £20 or so from Mr Norris — surely a modest price for such a spectacle, not to speak of the childminding — although you can pay £50 or £60 for gargantuan specimens of the species.

The government is planning to prohibit this innocent pastime. It has indicated that it will support an amendment to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill which will include cephalopods (squid, octopus, cuttlefish) and decapods (crabs, lobsters, crayfish, prawns) within its provisions. This will mean that boiling lobsters and crabs alive, the way in which they are overwhelmingly dispatched, will become illegal.

These three proposed bans are solutions in search of a problem

The law will also ban the sending of live lobsters and crabs through the post, the only way to get hold of them if one is not lucky enough to live by the sea or near Mr Norris’s stall or a similar purveyor.

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