With animal cruelty awareness on the rise, those who enjoy lobster have been looking for more "humane" ways to kill them than just dropping them in a pot of boiling water.
Electrocution and freezing have been brought up in the past, but one restaurant has a different approach to slaughtering their crustaceans: they get them high first.
Photo: Jan Beckendorf // According to the Mount Desert Islander, Charlotte's Legendary Lobster Pound in Southwest Harbor, Maine, is utilizing cannabis to calm the lobsters before steaming them alive.
Owner Charlotte Gill is a licensed picker and caregiver, so she's growing her own cannabis and is allowed to pick and sell the lobster meat she cooks after the THC-aided slaughter.
Gill tested her humane technique out on a single lobster first, placing it in a special tank that was "hot boxed," by blowing marijuana smoke inside. Apparently, the THC got through the water and into the lobster's bloodstream, causing it to remain calm.
This behavior continued for the next couple of weeks, as it displayed no aggression toward other lobsters in the tank. It was then eventually released into the wild.
As a result, Gill has set up a separate tank where she can get lobsters high in order to sedate them prior to their deaths.
This technique will be only done upon customer request, and for those wondering if these THC-infused lobsters will get you feeling some type of way, that won't be the case. The heat from the cooking process destroys any residual traces of the psychoactive, meaning there's no carryover effect to the consumer.
When it comes to taste, Gill claims that her lobsters die happier and produce a better tasting meat as a result.
"The difference it makes within the meat itself is unbelievable," she said.
Gill's work could be instrumental in helping develop new animal slaughter techniques that involve marijuana, and it'll be interesting to see if other restaurants attempt to follow suit.
