The politics of eating lobster

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.