The Lobstah Zappah

The latest thing in lobster executions:

A gadget designed by an English barrister will be on sale that stuns a lobster with electrodes and kills it within five seconds. The CrustaStun offers humane killing compared with the lobster’s usual fate — being drowned in freshwater, knifed in the head or boiled alive.

Kinda makes you see Maine's Lucky the Lobster in a whole new light, don't it. Throw the switch!

Zzzzzzt!....Zzzzzzt!...Zzzzzzzt!.....

The inventor of this thing apparently has been living under a rock for some time:

Mr Buckhaven was spurred to act after watching lobsters being boiled alive when on he was on holiday in France. “I thought immediately that this was barbaric and it would be done differently in Britain. But we found the same method was commonly used,� he said.

"It would be done differently in Britain." How, exactly? Did Mr. Buckhaven believe that the cook merely left a loaded revolver with the lobster and expected it to do the right thing?

Actually, the most chilling 'graff of the article is this one:

Another sales boost would come if the more humane killing of crustaceans is made compulsory in the European Union; a scientific report has said that they are “sentient beings� and so can feel pain.

The Gods of the Copybook Headings return! And they're writing up regulations for the legal way to kill a lobster. Will these zappers be mandatory even in private homes? Will there be Lobster Detector Vans patrolling the streets, monitoring for electromagnetic energy bursts to ensure that cook doesn't just toss the thing into the pot?

By the way, the article also asserts that many people won't order lobster out because they don't like the way they're dispatched. I don't know if this is true or not. I won't order it out because it's one of those foods which I believe very keenly should not be eaten in public - too messy. Lobster should be enjoyed around the family dinner table liberally strewn with newspaper, bowls of lemon-butter and tall glasses of Geary's.

But here's another thought: If the Lobstah Zappah is more humane and leads to increased demand, it might make things a bit easier for the individual lobsters concerned but won't it also.....promote the killing of more lobsters? I have a vague historical recollection that the same thing held true with the guillotine........

Yips! to Rachel.

UPDATE: Here's the CrustaStun website. Apparently, there's a single shock model and a "continuous flow stunner". And I see the Anzacs have already legislated lobster mercy-killing.

UPDATE DEUX: Now it looks as if you use one of these things on your lobster, it'll take you down as well. Oh, the humanity!