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DiscussionThoughts on eating oysters and mussels?
I only recently became aware that this is apparently a topic of debate in vegan circles. Oysters and mussels lack a brain and central nervous system, and they are immobile. Thus unlikely to experience pain or any sort of sentience.
Being vegan for ethical reasons, I haven't really found any convincing arguments for why we shouldn't eat them (during my limited research so far). Most vegans seem to be against it. The two most common arguments I saw were "they could feel pain in a way we don't know about, so we should err on the side of caution" or simply "they're animals and vegans don't eat animals". The first one seems a bit too close to the classic "but what if plants have feelings" argument, and the second is just semantics.
I don't really see myself incorporating bivalves into my diet any time soon, since they weren't a part of my diet even before I went vegan, but I thought it was an interesting topic. What do you ladies think about it?
Some links: https://theanimalist.medium.com/on-the-consumption-of-bivalves-bdde8db6d4ba https://vegancalm.com/bivalvegan-diet/
They are not immobile. They also actively avoid predation.
They have nervous systems with ganglia along with opioid receptors, that means they definitely have indications they could feel pain.
Pain is one of the most fundamental senses in animals as it increases survival rates dramatically. Many invertebrates feel paid. (They are used for pain testing in neuro labs).
We don't know if these bivalves feel pain, but it is very possible, so it seems easy just to choose not to possibly inflict pain. Also I remember being forced to dissect a clam in a lab in school and the poor thing was squirting water at me the whole time to defend itself.
Many invertebrates feel pain. (They are used for pain testing in neuro labs).
I never read about them being used in labs like that, but I'm interested to read about it. Could you tell me more or guide me to some sort of reading material about this?
Yeah, basically any 101 neurology textbook will start with this. As their neural system is so simple they are easy to study. Here is just one random link referencing it.
However, gastropod molluscs such as Aplysia, Lymnaea, or Helix, with their large uniquely identifiable nerve cells, make studies on the cellular, subcellular, network and behavioral actions of anesthetics much more feasible, particularly as identified cells may also be studied in culture, isolated from the rest of the nervous system.
At what level of neural complexity do creatures become conscious of themselves as individuals? We cannot yet answer the first of these questions, but clues are beginning to emerge about consciousness in bilaterians other than in deuterostomes such as advanced chordates, and also in the lophotrochozoan cephalopod molluscs (Godfrey-Smith, 2016; Carls-Diamante, 2017) and in the ecdysozoan decapod crustaceans (McGee and Elwood, 2013). If members of these three disparate animal groups are demonstrably conscious and sentient, but with different neurological structures, we need to determine how they converge to generate self-awareness, but we have not yet reached that position. If we are to do so we will need to determine the common characteristics in the brains of advanced molluscs, arthropods and ourselves. To do this it will be necessary to combine elements of neurophysiology and neuroethology with those from cognitive science and to attempt to understand the emergent properties of neural networks at many “levels above the single neuron” (Bullock, 1958). In common with vertebrates, cephalopod molluscs and arthropods in particular exhibit the following common characteristics:
- simple • condensed central ganglia often organized into a central brain centers due to cephalization during evolution. Thus their nervous systems are hierarchically organized with localization of function (Bullock et al., 1977, chapter 1; Sidorov, 2012), but it should be pointed out that the arms of Octopus vulgaris contain about two thirds of the 500 million neurons in the nervous system (Sumbre et al., 2001, 2005, 2006) and are semi-autonomous (Yekutieli et al., 2005a,b; Hochner, 2012)
- simple • complex behaviors, problem solving abilities, play like behavior, learning and memory capabilities, and adult neurogenesis (Wells, 1978; Mather, 1991; Boal, 1996; Kuba et al., 2003; Mather, 2008; Gutnick et al., 2011; Hochner, 2013; Di Cosmo and Polese, 2014; Godfrey-Smith, 2016; Bertapelle et al., 2017).
- simple • possess nociceptors and may have a capacity to feel pain (Crook et al., 2013; Alupay et al., 2014; Burrell, 2017).
The implication is that such animals are all likely to feel pain and recent progress in animal welfare legislation reflects this situation with an increased interest in invertebrate welfare (UK Statutory Instruments, 1993; Sharman, 2004; Moltschaniwskyj et al., 2007; European Parliament and European Union, 2010; Elwood, 2011; De Lisa et al., 2012; Andrews et al., 2013; Horvath et al., 2013; Magee and Elwood, 2013; Fiorito et al., 2014; Polese et al., 2014). Thus, it is now imperative that experimental biologists should pay attention to reducing pain and suffering at least in cephalopod molluscs and decapod crustaceans. For this reason we present this review of the actions of local and general anesthetics, mainly on gastropod molluscs, and also the limited available data on cephalopods, with a view to developing improved anesthetic techniques for cephalopods in the future.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6117391/
The article also refers to cephalopods feeling pain and as well as crustaceans.
Thank you! How sad to read they're tested on and used like that. What a dark process of trial and error too to reduce their suffering of pain, yikes.
Oh, I mean, that is nothing (as I am sure you know). I left research biology because it seemed like there was no way of participating in it that wasn't just hurting animals.
I can imagine. I studied in psychology, and even though animals are barely ever physically hurt, the mental anguish that they are put through in experiments is really appalling. The use of animals ruins active participation in many research fields.
When in doubt about the animal/plant itself, such as with oysters and mussels, it might be helpful to also check the way they are grown and harvested and whether that's harmful or not to animals and the environment. I have no idea about oysters and mussels myself, but it could be interesting to see if they are grown in wasteful water farms or if they are caught with nets or such that harm other animals and nature too.
I don't eat oysters and mussels, but I feel it's very easy to not eat them (at least where I live). They are an expensive and rare food and you have to go out of your way to buy and prepare them. Why bother when in doubt about their sentience or pain? I'd rather, like you mentioned, err on the side of caution and choose the easy path of consuming something else.
They don't have central nervous systems, but they do have nerve ganglia.
That being said, on my list of "things that are bad," eating oysters is not near the top.
Muscles can feel pain, everything can feel pain, damage to a body part is very bad for survival and making babies so everything evolves ways to detect that and really try hard to avoid it. Even amebas avoid damage.
Muscles will close up if they sense something near them, some open up faster, some slower, so even muscles have personality, that's how things evolve.
I think it is down to the individual, but I hope those who do eat mussles do not advertise that this is the norm for vegans and vegetarians.
Cause I do not want to be confronted with a "vegetarian" meal containing mussles at a restaurant.
The word should be understood to mean "nothing with animals" and no matter their presumable lack of sentience, mussles are animals.
I will admit I find them more disgusting to eat than sausages. (I can eat sausages and try not to think of the fact that they're made of animal, but you can't do that while slurping an oyster, can you?)
(Have you ever considered that any animal or animal part that people eat somewhere in the world is considered disgusting someplace else? And that this is not the case with plants, ever? "In China, they eat chicken feet, ewww" is something you can expect to hear, but has anyone ever expressed disgust at, say, bamboo sprouts? Brussel sprouts are controversial, but more among children of the cultures where they're eaten, not among foreigners. Vegan food is something all cultures can agree on is edible - and I think adding animals that are presumed non-sentient to what we consider "vegan" would create lots of problems there.)
Same.