FOR THE SAKE OF A FLAVOUR
" ESPECIALLY DELICIOUS"
author not given

Under a cross heading: 'This is a specially delicious recipe," Lobster a la Newburg was recently recommended in The Times. The "special delicacy" of the dish was obtained by the method of cooking : "Boil two small lobsters alive."

CONSCIENCE heartily concurs with the comments of "Janus" in the Spectator:

"Boiling live lobsters may be a delicious process, except for the lobsters, I know, of course, that I shall be told (a) that lobsters cannot feel, (b) that they feel positive pleasure in contact with boiling water (just as that self-sacrificing and public, spirited animal the fox does in the run for his life against outrageous odds), and (c) that there is no other satisfactory way of killing lobsters. I can only say as to (a) that I should want decisive scientific evidence before I believed it, and as to (c) that if that is true I am for letting lobsters live."

What is a civilization worth which can advocate such treatment of God's creatures in one of its most influential and respected newspapers?

Another item, in a German paper this time, mentions that a wild bird or animal, hunted down after a long struggle becomes saturated with lactic acid secretions due to the unusual exertion of the muscles. Food-lovers and gourmets affirm that such flesh is especially delicious. To obtain the same flavour in the meat of domesticated animals, sucking-pigs are flogged to death instead of being bled.

Henry S. Salt, well-known humanitarian said: "We may take it for granted that, in the long run, we shall treat our fellowmen as we treat our fellow-beings 'the animals' . . . The temper which makes war still possible is that which is kept alive and fostered in so-called times of peace by the practice among other practices ... of doing to death thousands upon thousands of helpless animals."

We are enjoined to make our bodies temples of the Holy Spirit; we make them cemeteries for the victims of our greed, victims of outrageous cruelty. Can we cry out against the cruelties of war meted out to us now, when we perpetrate such cruelties as these on defenceless innocent creatures, our younger brethren?