Ban on boiling lobsters alive would ruin taste, says chef
A CHEF at a Mayfair restaurant says banning the boiling of lobsters alive would spoil the taste.
David Simms said legislation proposed by Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, would risk ruining the quality of seafood. “No reputable chef will cook a dead lobster,” he added.
He suggested the ban would be the start of a slippery slope, as all shellfish is cooked alive for taste and food safety reasons. Mr Simms, managing director of a restaurant owned by Richard Corrigan, the celebrity chef, said: “Shellfish has to be alive when you cook it. When it’s dead, you’ve no idea how long it’s been dead and toxins grow – it’s not fresh. Crab, langoustines, oysters and scallops are all alive until you cook them, so why is he concerned about lobsters and nothing else? Where does it stop?” He also said chefs would like to see Mr Gove’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, focus on “more important issues”, such as food waste, food miles and supermarket use of plastics.
Animal rights campaigners including the RSPCA and the British Veterinary Association have campaigned for the preparation of the shellfish to be regulated, arguing that boiling live seafood causes them pain.
A Defra spokesman said: “We are committed to the very highest standards of animal welfare and are taking strong action in this area, including raising maximum sentences for animal cruelty to five years and making CCTV mandatory in slaughterhouses. As the PM has set out, we will make the UK a world leader in the care and protection of animals as we leave the EU.”
No one, given the choice, should be unkind to a lobster. Michael Gove, the Environment Secretary, wants us not to boil the creatures alive, not at least without stunning them first. This is well and good, even if it does spoil the taste, but will it stop there? If you were a new-caught lobster and had rubber bands put round your claws to stop you nipping the fish-cook’s finger, you’d be very frustrated. If you were a lobster on death row, hanging around in a tank of water with a few other lobsters to whom you had not been introduced, you’d be bored and bad-tempered. What about your very distant cousins, the oysters? You’d hate to see them uttering their ostreaceous last words as they slid down the throats of heartless seafoodfanciers. Granted, you are not a lobster, but the law may soon pretend that a lobster is like you.