Fresh Direct Responds: “Fresher when Cooked Alive”
The News
On Monday, TheirTurn reported that the online grocery giant Fresh Direct, which serves the NYC metropolitan area, is making home deliveries of live lobsters, and we suggested that people ask the company to stop. In response to my email asking them to deliver frozen lobsters in order to reduce the amount of time they suffer, Fresh Direct wrote:
“I can definitely understand your concern. We do not send them frozen, as lobsters are considered fresher when cooked alive. The meat tends to be tougher when eaten any other way.”
Your Turn
Is avoiding “tougher meat” an acceptable justification for prolonging a lobster’s suffering through live transport before boiling him or her alive? How can anyone think any of this is okay? Novelist David Foster Wallace once said, “Is it possible that future generations will regard our present eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero’s entertainments or Mengele’s experiments?” Of course they will. If you haven’t already, please do yourself, the planet and the animals a favor: go veg.
Wow! I’m glad you are reporting on this as I won’t use Fresh Direct anymore. Companies don’t do the right thing until it hits their wallets.
And we think we are civilized? We are barbarians!
This is very cruel. I sent them an email asking them to pull this ad.
Thank you, Donny, for contacting Fresh Direct and for sharing their response. They didn’t even respond to my email. We need many more people to call/email them to protest their promotion and glorification of boiling lobsters alive. Here is their contact info:
Email: service@freshdirect.com
Phone: 1-212-796-8002 in the New York area, 1-215-825-5726 in Philadelphia.