Lobsters are a favourite dish for lovers of sea creatures. To cook them, they have to be boiled alive. This practice has been criticised for decades by animal rights activists for the suffering caused to these shellfish. But now, the owner of a restaurant in Maine, in the USA, has an idea to reduce the suffering of lobsters: sedate them with cannabis.
“It makes me feel bad when we take in lobsters knowing the fate they will face,” said Charlotte Gill, owner of Legendary Lobster Pound, the restaurant that is experimenting with cannabis to sedate the shellfish and ease their pain during the cooking process. Still far from joining veganism and stopping the sale of animals for consumption, the food entrepreneur aims to give them a more dignified death in the pot where they will be boiled. Before heating the water, Gill pumps marijuana smoke through a hose to put the animals in a relaxed state.
In dialogue with the local media Mount Desert IslanderGill said that after evaluating the behavior of one of his test lobsters, He observed how the animals calmed down and they did not use their claws to defend themselves from certain death. The owner of the restaurant assured that she plans to offer this technique to sedate seafood to all customers who request it. “THC completely breaks down at 392 degrees, so we will use steam and heat to expose the meat to 420 degrees of extended temperature, to ensure that there is no possibility of a residual effect,” Gill detailed.
