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SOUTHWEST HARBOR, ME — Should lobsters get a toke for the road, so that when they’re dropped into a pot of boiling water, their passage into the crustacean afterlife will be gentler? Yes, according to Maine lobster pound owner Charlotte Gill, who gives her lobsters a marijuana contact high to make their inevitable deaths more humane.
Whether lobsters suffer pain is a long boiling debate. Scientists are divided on the topic, and say more research is needed on the sentience of crustaceans. Gill is on the side that being boiled to death is excruciatingly painful, and she believes sedating the lobsters takes some of the trauma out of being thrown into the death chamber.
Cooking lobsters any other way just isn’t done in Maine — or anywhere else that people appreciate expertly prepared lobster. And there’s a good reason for it
Lobsters are boiled alive to keep us safe from a severe form of food poisoning caused by a type of Vibrio bacteria that thrive in the decaying flesh of lobsters and other shellfish, showing up in a matter of hours. Even cooking a previously killed lobster won’t kill all the bacteria, so it’s safer to just keep it alive until it’s served.
But what about the lobsters? They may be Gill’s livelihood — she’s owned Charlotte’s Legendary Lobster Pound for seven years — but the long-time animal rights supporter doesn’t like how they die.
“I feel bad that when lobsters come here there is no exit strategy,” she told the Mount Desert Islander.
Gill removed the claw bands from Roscoe,the first lobster to get high in her experiment. Not only did Roscoe catch a buzz off the marijuana smoke that was infused into a box with a small amount of water at the bottom, he was stoned for days, even weeks.
When lobsters are captured, their powerful claws — used to crack open hard-shelled clams, mussels and crabs — are banded to protect the lobsters from each other, but also the humans who handle them. Before the experiment, Gill removed the bands, and didn’t have to re-apply them for three weeks.
And in this peace, (lobster) baby, peace moment, the other lobsters chilled out as well. Without his bands, Roscoe had a clear tactical advantage, but during his three weeks of semi-liberation, he never once used his claws defensively, Gill said.
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As thanks for his participation, Gill fully liberated Roscoe and released him back into the sea.
Recreational marijuana has been legal in Maine for about a year now, by the way. And Gill is licensed to grow medical marijuana, so she uses her product to ensure its quality. Getting lobsters baked when they’re “already going to be killed … is far more humane to make it a kinder passage” than some methods used around the world, she said.
In Switzerland, which banned the boiling of live lobsters earlier this year, the recommended cooking methods call for them to be electrocuted or stabbed in the head. The new law also requires that after they’re caught, lobsters must be transported in sea water for their comfort. New Zealand has had a similar ban on boiling live lobsters since 1999, and a small village in Italy has prohibited it as well.
A 2013 study from Queen’s University Belfast disrupted long-held beliefs among scientists as to the whether crustaceans feel pain. It showed crabs avoided electric shocks, which the researchers said suggested they feel at least some degree of pain.
“I don’t know what goes on in a crab’s mind … but what I can say is the whole behavior goes beyond a straightforward reflex response and it fits all the criteria of pain,” Bob Elwood, one of the authors of the study, told BBC when it was released.
Throughout the 2018 season, Gill has been offering her customers the option of ordering a lobster that has been sedated with cannabis. She wants to fully implement the method, but first needs to overcome some of the concerns of her customers that their lobster meat might be infused with THC, the compound in marijuana that produces euphoria.
Gill is confident it doesn’t. The likelihood of a residual effect “would be literally impossible,” she told the Islander in an email.
“THC breaks down completely by 392 degrees, therefore we will use both steam as well as a heat process that will expose the meat to a 420 degree extended temperature, in order to ensure there is no possible carryover effect,” she wrote.
And, she claims, calming the lobsters before they’re cooked doesn’t just make their deaths easier.
“The difference it makes within the meat itself is unbelievable,” Gill told the newspaper. “Everything you put into your body is energy.”
Photo: Food and Drink/Shutterstock