Killing Lobsters in 'Enormous Automated Crushing Machines.' Also, 'Homo Sapiens Is In Charge.'

The Whole Foods-lobster debate continued in this morning's Times with four or five letters to the editor, including one by Trevor Corson, who might turn out to be to the lobster industry what Eric Schlosser has been to the fast food industry.

To the Editor:
Perhaps Whole Foods should consider no longer selling processed lobster meat as well as live lobsters. Processed lobster comes from lobsters that die inside enormous automated crushing machines. They are loaded alive into a cylinder, and the water around them is compressed to several times the pressure found in the deepest trenches of the ocean.
Tests by animal-welfare experts are under way, but it is not yet clear how long the lobsters suffer inside these high-pressure processors before they die.
While perhaps more humane than boiling alive, it is certainly not more humane than pithing a lobster with a kitchen knife before you put it in the pot.
Trevor Corson
Washington, June 25, 2006
The writer is the author of a book about the biology of lobsters.

Something tells me that the people at Whole Foods have more of a headache than they were expecting from this.

There’s also a letter from a fellow who believes:

… we live in a world where Homo sapiens is in charge, and other orders are subject to our whims and rules…

That sums up our problems pretty well, I’d say.