The Los Angeles Times ran a story recently about how food shoppers are becoming more concerned about animal welfare. As is so often the case, the writer began with a dramatic vignette about boiling a lobster alive:

Veterinarian Bud Stuart was delighted when he was given a live lobster by a client as extra thanks for saving a dog — at least until the Santa Barbara seafood lover thought about cooking it.

Stuart put the lobster in the freezer, expecting the chill would anesthetize it. Yet, when he later held it above a boiling pot of water, it was still alive and pinching. The crustacean was tasty, but he now vows "never to bring another live lobster into this house. It was one of the most traumatic things I have done."

Stuart credits the lobster with making him think more about how the food he eats is raised. He no longer consumes foie gras — fatty liver produced by overfeeding ducks and geese — and now "supports in any way I can the humane treatment of food animals."

I never know whether to feel amused, frustrated, or enraged when I hear these kinds of stories. If you’ve been following the Lobster Blog and my writings on the subject of lobster killing—for example, my cover story in Boston magazine last summer—then you know I am the first person to advocate the humane treatment and killing of lobsters. But it is always stunning to me that someone can have an ethical “revelation” while killing what is, essentially, an underwater bug, and then have that revelation lead them to the decision to eat only humanely certified, grass-fed beef.

To me this seems to have things backwards in several ways:

a) There is a straightforward, quick, and humane way to kill a lobster at home that doesn’t involve boiling the animal alive. I have written about this at length; the instructions are here, my article about the whole subject is here. Sure, it looks gruesome, but don’t confuse drama with ethics—kitchen knife to the thorax is the quickest and most painless way for the lobster to go. Every fish, bird, and animal you eat was once alive, and somebody had to kill it. (There is also an argument to be made that lobsters killed this way taste better; see a discussion on this with Chef Eric Ripert in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal Online.) 

b) Killing a lobster is traumatic? Try killing a cute,  trusting young goat (which I have done), even humanely. That’s traumatic. Mammals are much closer to humans than a lobster. If you eat meat, lobster is one of the least complicated food choices you can make from an ethical standpoint—a Maine lobster is sustainably harvested and has a nervous system roughly equivalent to that of an insect. If you’ve ever killed a housefly or a mosquito, eating a lobster shouldn’t keep you up at night.

So how come lobsters freak people out? As I’ve said many times before, I think it’s because the lobster is the last animal we still see alive and kicking in our kitchen. To me, that’s not a cause for disgust. In this day and age, it’s a rare and valuable opportunity to remind ourselves that if we are going to eat meat at all, we need to face the fact that living creatures must die to feed us.