Tanya Gold Tanya Gold

The politics of eating lobster

iStock

Lobsters like to live in gullies on the sea floor, or under sand, and I understand how they feel. But you can’t hide from politics. An amendment to the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill will make it illegal to post shrink-wrapped lobsters alive, or boil them alive, which turns them from blue to Father Christmas scarlet. In Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand it is already illegal to boil them. It is considered kinder to freeze them or pierce them or shoot them with an expensive lobster-stunning gun which you can probably buy in Hampstead Village. And then boil them.

Lobsters were once food for the destitute near the sea, so plentiful they would wash ashore in piles. Then the trains came, and it was possible to transport them inland. The price shot up. I think the pleasure is in the oddness; the decadence to eating something so resistant and with so little meat. Lobsters grow a shell each year, but it hasn’t helped them so far.

In the seafood restaurant I visit, they don’t want to boil them alive. They don’t want them at all. The lobsters come in ‘flustered’ and need to sit under damp tea towels so they can’t see what’s happening. ‘It’s taken a long time for people to realise they do feel,’ says the chef. He pierces their spinal cord with a knife ‘because it’s more humane’. A waitress here once worked in a restaurant where lobsters were steamed alive: they were placed on racks with trays of water at the bottom. They knocked on the door with their claws, pleading, she says: tap, tap, tap. Or they would shed their claws, like a lobster in a Russian novel.

I am glad I have only eaten two: once in a Swiss restaurant with a pretend decadent uncle who couldn’t conceal his heartbreak and once for a newspaper feature.

Already a subscriber? Log in

Keep reading with a free trial

Subscribe and get your first month of online and app access for free. After that it’s just £1 a week.

There’s no commitment, you can cancel any time.

Or

Unlock more articles

REGISTER

Comments

Don't miss out

Join the conversation with other Spectator readers. Subscribe to leave a comment.

Already a subscriber? Log in