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Well, fuck.

For the first time I see myself sort of kinda sympathizing with PETA (oh man, I just threw up a little from miy fingers after typing that)

I'm not gonna embed it, but I'll link to a YouTube video of crazy oriental... contests. Be warned there's cruelty shown to both a snake and a fish.


Now, seriously... is that really fucking necessary?? Is the fish gonna taste better if it's mouth is still moving as you spoon it into your mouth!? What's the point of skinning and boiling it alive!?

I was pretty disturbed by this video, but others linked it like it was nothing, another "oh, those crazy moon people" sort of things.. but... ugh.. come on.

Calleja said:

Now, seriously... is that really fucking necessary?? Is the fish gonna taste better if it's mouth is still moving as you spoon it into your mouth!? What's the point of skinning and boiling it alive!?

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Well, yes, one argument is that it does taste better that way. It would probably taste pretty much the same if you killed the fish first, but that wouldn't provide any showy proof that it was recently alive and is thus very fresh. Personally I agree that it's unnecessary, but I can also understand how the practice got started.

Well, at least for the snakes, they aren't still alive. They cut off the head first thing. That snake is dead. Just because it's muscles are still contracting doesn't mean it's still alive.

Also, if you think this is cruel, you better not look too hard into how you got that beef on your table.

I've eaten live squid.

The thing was taken out of the tank, stretched and slapped around a little (tenderizing? Tiring out? Maybe just insulting it, I don't know), and then chopped up and served to us. The tentacle bits were still squirming when we ate them, and they squirmed on the way down.

The taste was nothing to write home about, but the 'show' was fun.

And since squid are quite a bit more intelligent than fish (who, lets face it, are pretty damn dumb) then I probably don't have any right to condemn speed-cooking.

Call me when they try to speed cook an ape. Then I'll protest.


Edit - Actually, thinking about it now, I'm pretty sure it was octopus, and not squid.

oh noooooo wont someone think of the sea kittens? look at him, his 2 firing neurons must be in intense, fishy pain!

What I'm saying here is that, even though I'll be a meat eater forever, there are cruelty lines that CAN be crossed when treating the animals we eat.

This is sure as hell one of them.

Mostly the fish, yeah.. although that beheading of the snake wasn't precisely as quick as a speed cooker should do it.

Live food is served fairly often in some countries/cultures, actually. My roommate has eaten live shrimp (saw him do it).

In Snake Alley in Taipei, the guy kills a snake and has someone come up and drink some of the blood that spurts out. Then he skins it with one movement. Pretty cool to watch, especially while enjoying a nice cup of snake soup.

....oh crap. I'm turning into a hippie, aren't I?

I forget who, but some culture has cattle which they stab in the throat to drink the blood that flows from the fresh wound, but not fatal enough of a wound, so as to not kill the cow, and therefore, stab the fucker in the neck after a few months for the same process again.

Well, bulls and cows are tough sunobitches, which anyone who's seen a bull fight can attest to (can we agree THAT'S cruel handling of animals at least? killing slowly for entertainment?) so I don't think a wound in the neck, no matter how much blood spurts, hurts them much, the skin they have to break is minimal.

But skinning alive and boiling and eating you while you're still twitching, alive? I don't care if it's just a fish, that's unnecessarily cruel.

ElJuski said:

I forget who, but some culture has cattle which they stab in the throat to drink the blood that flows from the fresh wound, but not fatal enough of a wound, so as to not kill the cow, and therefore, stab the fucker in the neck after a few months for the same process again.

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I think it's India.

Calleja said:

Now, seriously... is that really fucking necessary?? Is the fish gonna taste better if it's mouth is still moving as you spoon it into your mouth!? What's the point of skinning and boiling it alive!?

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As opposed to tossing a live lobster in a boiling pot, letting a fish slowly suffocate then skinning it, or grabbing an eel from a tank and slicing it open?

Really, this method isn't all that unusual. You just don't often make a contest out of it.

I think I read once that in some asian country (korea?) it's common to cook fish this way in restaurants, because that way the people eating the fish are guaranteed that it's not old and bad.

Yeah, last week I caught a fish, and tossed him into a pan at the bottom of the boat. He was hours before he stopped flopping and moving his gills. When I went to gut one, he hadn't been in the boat that long, and he was still weakly quivering his gills. Which is when I stuck my forefinger and middle finger into his eyes, and my thumb under his chin, held him over the edge of the boat, and cut him from 'chin' to tail.

It occurred to me afterwards that had I been doing that to a cat, I'd very likely be in court right now.

Rob King said:

Yeah, last week I caught a fish, and tossed him into a pan at the bottom of the boat. He was hours before he stopped flopping and moving his gills. When I went to gut one, he hadn't been in the boat that long, and he was still weakly quivering his gills. Which is when I stuck my forefinger and middle finger into his eyes, and my thumb under his chin, held him over the edge of the boat, and cut him from 'chin' to tail.

It occurred to me afterwards that had I been doing that to a cat, I'd very likely be in court right now.

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I went fishing recently and got me a catfish. I put him in a fish cage that goes back in the water, to keep him alive, and then when I brought him home, he had only been out of the water about 10 or 15 minutes. I put him in an ice chest to slow down his metabolism and keep him from dying too quick on the ride home.

I got home, and pulled him out of the ice chest, and there was blood on the ice chest walls where he had rubbed his fins raw trying to flop around. I took him out, put my thumb in his mouth, cut off his dorsal fin, and ripped the skin from his body with a specialty pair of pliers.

Then I cut him from neck to bass hole (that's a little fish humor from my grandpa, RIP), and pulled his guts out. I cut me off a couple of nice fat fillets, and all that was left of him was the spine, his head, and tail, all still attached to each other. He was still gasping for breath when I wrapped him up in newspaper and put him in the trash.

I think people should probably spend a little more time learning how their animal food is prepared, so that they can understand that we're really not so divorced from the brutality of nature, and so they can come to understand the sacrifice in life that is made so that we can continue living. You really don't get much of that when you pull a McBurger out of a cardboard box.

I had a friend give me a really convincing argument about PETA (and similar groups) once. His contention was that they were "pendulum swingers", and that, though the low men on the totem pole might be fanatics, most supporters are perfectly aware (at least partially) of how ridiculous they are being. His pendulum analogy was that sometimes you have to swing the pendulum pretty hard to one side to get it to go back to the middle. I liked that argument. I (probably many people) actually tend to use a similar approach when I argue or debate. I take a far extreme that I don't necessarily believe just to make a point.

Dammit, now I'm all hungry for cat. Thanks.

Tinwhistler said:

I think people should probably spend a little more time learning how their animal food is prepared, so that they can understand that we're really not so divorced from the brutality of nature, and so they can come to understand the sacrifice in life that is made so that we can continue living. You really don't get much of that when you pull a McBurger out of a cardboard box.

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Amen. That's half the reason I asked to gut my own fish.

Although, this came up in a similar thread a while back. I wouldn't go so far as to say "If you can't kill, gut, and clean it, you shouldn't eat it." I totally understand if people have weak stomachs, or if they bond too quickly with an animal in the time it takes to cross the slaughterhouse floor. But at least realize that we don't anesthetize our fish/chickens/pigs/cows on satin pillows, write letters to their families when they pass, say a few words, errect a monument, and then sombrely harvest the meat.

The process is quick and dirty by necessity.

Calleja said:

....oh crap. I'm turning into a hippie, aren't I?

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No you're not. I don't see the point of eating things while they're still alive either. Delicacy my ass.

I feel a little bad that the animals were alive but I am torn on this. Part of me thinks it was cool to watch and figure as long as they eat the food its fine but the other part of me wonders if it really makes a difference in the taste to take 2 seconds to kill the animal first. So I am really torn on this. I love meat but can you really justify not killing the animal first?

hylian said:

I feel a little bad that the animals were alive but I am torn on this. Part of me thinks it was cool to watch and figure as long as they eat the food its fine but the other part of me wonders if it really makes a difference in the taste to take 2 seconds to kill the animal first. So I am really torn on this. I love meat but can you really justify not killing the animal first?

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As I mentioned in my previous post, I don't think it's so much about the taste of the fish that's still alive (versus only being dead 2 seconds ago). I think the practice derived from the fact that you wanted to make sure your fish didn't die sometime last week. If it's still wiggling, that's a great testament to it's freshness. And seafood is one of those things you definitely don't want to eat if it's even just a little old.

On a side note, had I breaded my my catfish fillets and thrown them in the pan, and ate them, I expect the fish head would still have been gasping for breath by the time I was done eating.

So why not, if you're that desperate to know the fish is fresh, have them kill it in front of you, and then they can go on with the cooking of the dead animal?

I mean.. seriously.. I understand wanting to keep it fresh, but serving it still alive!? No, at least behead the thing, I promise it won't taste different if you cook it without a head.

Everything tastes better while it's still alive and screaming.... everything....

Shegokigo said:

Everything tastes better while it's still alive and screaming.... everything....

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Let's leave our sex lives out of this, shall we?

Fun Size said:

Shegokigo said:

Everything tastes better while it's still alive and screaming.... everything....

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Let's leave our sex lives out of this, shall we?

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ElJuski said:

I forget who, but some culture has cattle which they stab in the throat to drink the blood that flows from the fresh wound, but not fatal enough of a wound, so as to not kill the cow, and therefore, stab the fucker in the neck after a few months for the same process again.

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It's African... Massai, I think. *checks* Oooops, spelled it wrong. Maasai, from Tanzania. I remembered seeing it on an episode of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel.

Ravenpoe said:

I've eaten live squid.

Edit - Actually, thinking about it now, I'm pretty sure it was octopus, and not squid.

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Poor thing. Octopodes are the most intelligent non-mammals in the world! They're on the same level as dogs!

Gill Kaiser said:

Poor thing. Octopodes are the most intelligent non-mammals in the world! They're on the same level as dogs!

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Flavor-wise or intelligence?

figmentPez said:

ElJuski said:

I forget who, but some culture has cattle which they stab in the throat to drink the blood that flows from the fresh wound, but not fatal enough of a wound, so as to not kill the cow, and therefore, stab the fucker in the neck after a few months for the same process again.

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It's African... Massai, I think. *checks* Oooops, spelled it wrong. Maasai, from Tanzania. I remembered seeing it on an episode of Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel.

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It's not all that uncommon a practice. I read that the Mongols did it with horses, so that they didn't have to stop riding to eat. Cut a small slit in your pony's jugular, drink your fill, and then put a little bit of clay on the cut to help it clot. They also strapped themselves into their saddles, so they didn't have to stop riding to sleep. The moral of the story is if you want to create the largest overland empire the world has ever seeen, you've got to be in charge of some hardcore motherfuckers.

Also, I believe the Maasai mix their cow blood with milk.

And how is that practice of eating your animal alive any different from the way non-human predators do it? When a predator brings down an animal, it doesn't waste time killing it. They essentially beat it into a stupor and then dig in. Once you reach a certain threshold with most animals (and I believe with humans, though don't quote me on it), they stop struggling and just wait. Birds caught in fishing line, for example, won't even move when you try to extricate them. They'll just hang there, staring at you.

In Thailand, I use to go to the fish market and get myself a catfish. They take the catfish, bash its head in (while it is still alive) and wrap in paper. I take it home, cook it and eat it.... it was good.

I can understand why people do this. There have been issues regarding freshness of meat. Meat standing out too long can cause medical problems.

Zarvox said:

And how is that practice of eating your animal alive any different from the way non-human predators do it?

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Uhh... yeah, I don't shit on the woods or fuck my own family either. Should I do that too?

Calleja said:

Zarvox said:

And how is that practice of eating your animal alive any different from the way non-human predators do it?

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Uhh... yeah, I don't shit on the woods or fuck my own family either. Should I do that too?

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in some culture they do...

I'll stop hanging around the forums or reading books and stuff, cause non-human predators just lie around in the grass and sleep on their free time, too.

Chibibar said:

Calleja said:

Zarvox said:

And how is that practice of eating your animal alive any different from the way non-human predators do it?

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Uhh... yeah, I don't shit on the woods or fuck my own family either. Should I do that too?

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in some culture they do...

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No joke, though. I just had a conversation with a guy from Ontario a few days ago. He was talking about how curious it is that Newfoundlanders are so obsessed with who is in the direct line of your family. The explanation he was given was that if there was somebody who wasn't in your direct line (as in, descended from the same grandfather, or great grandfather, depending on the size of the family and the communities involved), then people with your same last name were fair game.

He mentioned that as far as he knew, there is a region on the Northern Peninsula where all people with a specific last name were descended from three brothers who came across from Ireland together. Descendants of each brother have intermarried, but somehow they drew the line at intermarrying between descendants of the same brother.

I'm not all about "Let's just all be animals, and to hell with this 'society' bullshit." But we're not as far removed as many people might like to think.

If it makes you feel better, Callaja, a Dr. Rose has done studies on fish pain for about 30 years and come to the conclusion that fish don't feel pain. So, frying that fish alive really didn't have any impact on it psychologically whatsoever.


Sure, fish react to injury. But so do you when you hit your thumb with a hammer. You yank your hand back, you stick your thumb in your mouth, and an instant or two passes before you feel the pain. Everything before that was an automatic response from your spinal column.

So, what if pain response never got past your spinal column, and to your brain? Your thumb would never 'hurt'. You simply would have the reaction of jerking it back when injured, but then suffer no psychological pain experience.. that's essentially what Dr. Rose has said in his studies on fish pain.

Dr Rose sounds like a made up name aranoid:

It's still too.. barbaric to want the fish to be flopping around your plate as you eat it, pain on their part or no. I'd never eat something that wriggled it's way down, that's for sure.

I believe Snake Alley in Taipei is now very strictly regulated by the government, so it's very rare (or even impossible) to see live beheadings any more. I've only been there once myself, though, and during that trip I saw no live beheadings, so my own personal experience is quite limited.

Dr. James D. Rose, Professor Emeritus, Dept. of Zoology and. Physiology, University of Wyoming.

I understand your gut reaction to eating live animals. But that's cultural. It's a gut reaction to something that you're not used to. That gut reaction doesn't really mean the fish suffered any distress (other than the fact that, you know, it died and someone ate it). At least no distress greater than it would suffer if prepared in any other manner.

The snake was beheaded before being prepared. I'm not sure how more humanely one would go about quickly killing and preparing an animal for dinner. The fact that it's chopped up and freshly prepared body still exhibits motor responses, and that makes you squeamish, doesn't really translate to the snake being prepared in anything but a perfectly humane manner.

tl;dr: Yeah, stuff still moving may seem gross, because you're not used to it. That doesn't mean PETA is right.

I said on the first few posts how the snake wasn't that bad cause it did get beheaded (although it took two chops.. ouch), but that the fish was literally skinned, boiled and mutilated alive.... and that did light up "cruelty" lights for me.

Do you have any links to the findings of this Dr. Rose? Not that I'm saying you're lying or I don't believe you, I just find it interesting that a whole species.. no, a whole subset of fauna.. would evolve without feeling pain.. it seems... counter-productive, somehow. Pain is like the ultimate expression of the survival instinct.

NO fish feel pain? Not even the big ones like sharks or whatever? Man, that's crazy.

bhamv3 said:

I believe Snake Alley in Taipei is now very strictly regulated by the government, so it's very rare (or even impossible) to see live beheadings any more. I've only been there once myself, though, and during that trip I saw no live beheadings, so my own personal experience is quite limited.

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Oh yeah, I think it was even illegal at the time I went there (many years ago). My Taiwanese friends knew just where to go though, which is funny since I think a lot of people in Taipei aren't too proud of Snake Alley. They were getting a kick out of trying to gross me out.

ElJuski said:

I forget who, but some culture has cattle which they stab in the throat to drink the blood that flows from the fresh wound, but not fatal enough of a wound, so as to not kill the cow, and therefore, stab the fucker in the neck after a few months for the same process again.

Click to expand...

Yeah in my sociology class we watched a video on rites of passage for some tribe in Africa, I wish I could remember which one. But this boy had to jump over cows to become a man and they had to bring the cows in from like miles away to do this and on the way back they would drink the blood for sustenance.

Calleja said:

I said on the first few posts how the snake wasn't that bad cause it did get beheaded (although it took two chops.. ouch), but that the fish was literally skinned, boiled and mutilated alive.... and that did light up "cruelty" lights for me.

Do you have any links to the findings of this Dr. Rose? Not that I'm saying you're lying or I don't believe you, I just find it interesting that a whole species.. no, a whole subset of fauna.. would evolve without feeling pain.. it seems... counter-productive, somehow. Pain is like the ultimate expression of the survival instinct.

NO fish feel pain? Not even the big ones like sharks or whatever? Man, that's crazy.

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I do have links. I'll post them tomorrow when i get to work.

A cursory google search for "university of wyoming rose fish pain" in google will find them if you're in a hurry.

Bottom line is, fish don't have the brain power to actually feel pain as we know it. They have reflexes based upon damage sensed via nocicpetors, but that is not the same thing as feeling pain.

A big fish has the same brain power as a small one. Cold-blooded animals have less brain power than warm blooded, in general, and fish, in general, are the worst of the lot.

Tinwhistler said:

Calleja said:

I said on the first few posts how the snake wasn't that bad cause it did get beheaded (although it took two chops.. ouch), but that the fish was literally skinned, boiled and mutilated alive.... and that did light up "cruelty" lights for me.

Do you have any links to the findings of this Dr. Rose? Not that I'm saying you're lying or I don't believe you, I just find it interesting that a whole species.. no, a whole subset of fauna.. would evolve without feeling pain.. it seems... counter-productive, somehow. Pain is like the ultimate expression of the survival instinct.

NO fish feel pain? Not even the big ones like sharks or whatever? Man, that's crazy.

Click to expand...

I do have links. I'll post them tomorrow when i get to work.

A cursory google search for "university of wyoming rose fish pain" in google will find them if you're in a hurry.

Bottom line is, fish don't have the brain power to actually feel pain as we know it. They have reflexes based upon damage sensed via nocicpetors, but that is not the same thing as feeling pain.

A big fish has the same brain power as a small one. Cold-blooded animals have less brain power than warm blooded, in general, and fish, in general, are the worst of the lot.

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I am happy you brought it up. First thing I thought when watching the video was "the snake was killed first and I thought there were studies about fish not feeling pain".

Barrabas and his soldiers once took out a group of pirates that would eat human brains while the humans were still alive. They felt nothing as the spoon dug into their brains but it was still disturbing.

XP-Dolphin said:

I am happy you brought it up. First thing I thought when watching the video was "the snake was killed first and I thought there were studies about fish not feeling pain".

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Yup..I did a lot of research on animal consciousness back when we had our "behaviorist" debate on animal cruelty.

Basically, I'm of the opinion that we should treat our food as humanely as possible, even though nature herself is cruel. It's entirely likely that higher animals, like cows, can feel pain like we do. Studies are beginning to show that many higher animals have feelings and the like on order with their brain power. I wouldn't advocate cooking a cow alive.

But I got no problems at all with a fish. A fish just has no way to conceptualize that it's being cooked alive at all. It's nociceptors might fire, and it's reflexes may be to try to swim really fast as a result, but that's not the same as pain. It's not like that fish is sitting there going "AAAH! Some asshole is cooking me alive! This SUXXXXX! Oh, the pain!" That fish isn't thinking much (if anything) at all.

ZenMonkey said:

ElJuski said:

I forget who, but some culture has cattle which they stab in the throat to drink the blood that flows from the fresh wound, but not fatal enough of a wound, so as to not kill the cow, and therefore, stab the fucker in the neck after a few months for the same process again.

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I think it's India.

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The show 'Going Tribal' had an episode from the Suri tribe in Ethiopia that did that very thing.

NSFW due to native nudity and such
http://videos.howstuffworks.com/discove ... -video.htm


Underneath the bridge
The tarp has sprung a leak
And the animals Ive trapped
Have all become my pets
And Im living off of grass
And the drippings from the ceiling
Its okay to eat fish
cause they dont have any feelings

First year of college I had a job working at a fish market/seafood resturant.

Usually we'd scale gut and clean the fish after it was dead, but lobsters were another story.

We'd grab a few out of the tanks, still moving of course and lay them down on the cutting boards. Two quick chops from head to tail opened it up, then you plucked out the gizzard and guts.

I didn't mind after the first two, but you'd hear the kids screaming since the lobsters were fighting us every step of the way.

Best part about boiling lobsters alive? They really do scream. :uhhuh:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQhfknFrlA0:21bcqfum][/youtube:21bcqfum]

Shegokigo said:

Best part about boiling lobsters alive? They really do scream. :uhhuh:

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That's steam whistling through/out of it's shell.

And for Calleja:
abstract essay:
Do Fish Feel Pain?
http://cotrout.org/do_fish_feel_pain.htm

More scholarly paper:
The Neurobehavioral Nature of Fishes and the Question of Awareness and Pain
http://www.nal.usda.gov/awic/pubs/Fishwelfare/Rose.pdf