Mercy Killing

Transforming the rough craft of lobstering into a gentle art, a New Hampshire outfit has persuaded Whole Foods Market to waive its ban on live lobster sales at a new store opening next week in Portland, Maine.

For Whole Foods, an upscale grocery chain promising "animal compassionate" foods, the decision marks yet another effort to provide its customers with the delicacy while giving the lobsters what it considers a decent demise. Whole Foods brought a national debate to a boil last year after it first offered little condos for lobsters in holding pens so the animals would not attack each other, and then scuttled the idea and banned all live lobster sales, equating current lobster catch-and-ship techniques with torture.

from the Boston Globe

We like to kill our own lobsters with an overdose of heroin, so we know they don’t suffer. Two of my Latina students tried to convince me in class today that South American lobsters scream as they are being boiled alive in the lobster pot. Can this be true?