PETA's Lobster Protest Photo: Even Better Than I'd Hoped
Saturday, February 17, 2007 | posted by Mike
I wish I could run the photo of the lobster protest here in this post. I really, really, really do. I wasn't able to entice a member of the TVFF Army to spend a lunch break getting the pictures for me, so I'm just going to have to point to this post over at Gothamist, which features a user-submitted photo from the "protest."
I don't usually like to use scare quotes around a word like protest, mainly because I do think that people who take time out of their life to make their point known deserve some measure of respect. Frankly, most of us can't be bothered to tear ourselves away from our 24X7 Bald Brittany Spears coverage to protest anything.
But the big, goofy grin on Mr. Lobster may not convey the level of seriousness and gravity that the PETA folks had hoped.
We did do a bit of reading on the various message boards that covered this subject and I was glad to see that there was a particularly robust debate among the foodies on the topic of whether or not the incident constituted abuse.
Look...if you're going to eat any animal, you have to come to grips that the pig, cow, chicken or whatever meets a less-than-pleasant end. But chefs like Alton Brown point out that these are animals with feeling and that, since they are giving themselves to become our dinner, we owe them a certain amount of respect on how they are slaughtered. Where that line is -- what constitutes inhumane treatment -- is a legitimate question.
The fact is that Chef Bowles did something that is probably done by a thousand chefs in a thousand kitchens. But he did it on national cable, and that means it suddenly became an issue.
I don't know the "right" way to cook a lobster. I don't really think that anyone does. But I'm glad that Iron Chef America pushed the discussion to the forefront.
Labels: Iron Chef America
