Move is part of a long-awaited Labour strategy including outlawing hen cages and ending puppy farming

Boiling lobsters while they are alive and conscious will be banned as part of a government strategy to improve animal welfare in England.

Government ministers say that “live boiling is not an acceptable killing method” for crustaceans and alternative guidance will be published.

The practice is already illegal in Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand. Animal welfare charities say that stunning lobsters with an electric gun or chilling them in cold air or ice before boiling them is more humane.

  • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
    21·
    6 hours ago

    I do care about the planet actually surviving this. We’ve created way too many animals, the natural ecosystems won’t be able to sustain them all if we release them into the wild and let them reproduce. The outcome will be devastated ecosystems and a lot of animals dying due to starvation. Sterilization is the least inhumane way out of this mess.

    • Coleslaw4145@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 hours ago

      We’ve created way too many animals

      Thats not the animals fault though. Why should they pay the price for our mistake?

      Sterilization is the least inhumane way out of this mess.

      You’re bascially suggesting that we wipe out entire species of livestock because humans deem their existance is no longer necessary.

      Ecosystems can’t accomadate them in the wild yes, but without farming neither can the human economy.

      So the only option left is extinction via sterilization.

      And that just sounds like animal murder with extra steps.

      • balsoft@lemmy.mlEnglish
        1·
        2 hours ago

        So, what is your proposal? This is not a rhetorical question, I’ve thought and read about it for a while and it seems to me like the least bad practical option, because the others are:

        • Kill them directly (way more suffering, seems worse)
        • Release them into the wild, ensuring most die from hunger or predators and destroy entire ecosystems (seems worse to me as well)
        • Keep them in the same hellhole farms where they already are, but stop insemination and ensure sex separation (seems the same as sterilization but with another way to remove autonomy)
        • Magically build shelters for them and let them reproduce freely while providing them with food. This is (1) pretty much impossible economically, (2) clearly not sustainable because it will just result in an explosion in their numbers, without a clear plan to provide food for them long-term.