Speed Cooking Live Animals

[Tinwhistler]

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.

 

[Calleja]

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.

 

[bhamv3]

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.

 

[Tinwhistler]

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.

 

[Calleja]

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.

 

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.

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.

 

[HoboNinja]

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.

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.

 

[Tinwhistler]

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.

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.

 

[XP-Dolphin]

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.

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.

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".

 

[Steve]

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.

 

[Tinwhistler]

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".

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.

 

[drawn_inward]

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.

I think it's India.

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

 

[WolfOfOdin]

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.

 

[Shegokigo]

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

 

[HowDroll]

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

 

[Tinwhistler]

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

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