Boiling Lobster, it may taste delicious but is it morally ethical?
"Consider the Lobster" by David Foster Wallace Gourmet Magazine August 2004
In David Foster Wallace's essay, "Consider the Lobster", he asks if it is morally ethical to boil a live sentient creature for our gustatory (eating or the sense of taste) pleasure.
A common misconception is that lobsters have a very simple nervous system and that since they have no cerebral cortex, they cannot experience pain the way humans do.
In fact, hundreds of thousands of hairs protrude through the hard shell of the lobster which allow it to "receive stimuli and impression from without as readily as if it possessed a a soft and delicate skin." Lobsters also have invertebrate versions of major neurotransmitters via which our own brains register pain.
However, lobsters are not able to produce natural opioids such as endorphins, which more advanced nervous systems use to try and bear pain. With this fact, one can conclude that lobsters are more vulnerable to pain, or that the absence of natural opioids could mean that they are not capable of experiencing really intense pain-sensations that the opiods are designed to alleviate.
Readers, if you knew that a lobster could feel they are being boiled alive, would you still eat them?
