Sacramento eatery takes 'dancing shrimp' off menu

[Liberal_in_LA]

Sacramento eatery takes 'dancing shrimp' off menu

Friday, September 3, 2010


(09-03) 16:28 PDT Sacramento, Calif. (AP) --

A Sacramento restaurant has agreed to stop serving live shrimp after an animal-rights group said the practice was cruel to the shellfish.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals says the restaurant, Nishiki Sushi, suggested squeezing lemon juice on the shrimps' exposed flesh so they would writhe as they were eaten. The dish is commonly referred to as "dancing shrimp" and is considered a delicacy in Japan.

PETA contacted the restaurant after receiving dozens of complaints about the practice.

Restaurant manager Tony Malpartida told The Sacramento Bee that customers were excited about the dish but said the restaurant had agreed to take live prawns off the menu.

The live prawns were bathed in cold sake before the tail was removed and served to customers.


Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2010/09/03/state/n162802D52.DTL&tsp=1#ixzz0yVxqYrJx

[Shell Beau]

1. Gross. People eat live creatures here?

That is terrible. Awful. I am astonished for some weird reason.

[grantcart]

2. In Japan I once was a guest at a Sushi Restaurant

where the fish are taken out of the tank and then the chef takes the meat off while not touching critical organs.


The fish is then propped up with tooth picks on the same plate with its meat and it still wriggles around while the guests eat the fish's meat.



I told my host that I was having a bad stomach and ordered noodles.


They thought it was great fun.

[Shell Beau]

7. I would have to leave. To either puke my guts up

or cry. That is so gross on more than one level.

[Danger Mouse]

16. I've heard about this. Also, I've heard of a kind of fish where they flash-fry it alive...

and it still twitches.

Horrid stuff.

[grantcart]

17. I had been drinking with the Japanese for a few hours and really nobody

can drink like a Japanese businessman, its not just the quantity but also switching from Beer to Whiskey to Saki.


Anyway I didn't catch on what was happening right away.


By about the third 'dish' they brought a really ugly 'stone' fish. He wasn't moving at all and so my host put some saki on his chop stick and fed it into the impailed fish's mouth.


For some reason the idea of feeding what was obviously a 'dead' fish alcohol in order to revive it struck me as very funny and so I brought my self to within an inch of the fish and asked him if he was under the weather or some other stupid drunk talk and then this big ugly fish that looked like it was from the prehistoric era came back to life and lunged at me while still impailed.

It was literally like the movies when a force propels you out of your seat 4 feet directly up and when I came down I was 10 feet away and then I realized what was happening. These folks were looking at the fish while they were eating them. It was so surrealistic and I was so drunk that my mind just went into a numbed state. Much more drinking followed.

[izquierdista]

4. It takes all kinds

Some kinds take live bait for lunch; some kinds have taken parasitology.

[Shell Beau]

8. I eat meat, but I try to be as cruel free as possible.

Eating a living animal is far from cruel. Whatever kinds it takes, I don't care. It is just wrong.

[izquierdista]

18. I don't eat living animals

But you should see what my chickens do. Toss a tomato hornworm or a grasshopper in with them and they are like piranhas.

[Shell Beau]

19. Well thankfully, us humans are smarter than chickens.

[mike r]

3. Sounds like a Fear Factor menu

[nonconformist]

5. Call me crazy, but I don't think I could eat anything that was moving.

How skeevy.

[Metryguy]

6. Who really cares about the ethical treatment of shrimp?

PETA really needs to pick its battles better. I would have told them to take a hike if I owned that restaurant. Shrimp are like the roaches of the sea, albeit very tasty roaches. How do most shrimp die? By suffocating on the deck of a boat or a picking box before being thrown on ice. How is this less humane? It's not. I wouldn't eat them, not because of humane reasons, but because I like mine boiled in Zatarain's or fried on a shrimp po-boy.

[Shell Beau]

9. It is a live animal. Period.

Maybe you are one of those who likes to pour salt on a slug... Whatever. If you want to eat meat, as I do, don't make it suffer. We aren't animals in the wild. We are civilized. Well, most of us are.

[Whisp]

11. I know what you intend to mean... but the meat we eat does suffer, and suffers horribly.

they just don't wiggle when they are steaks in the pan

[Shell Beau]

14. Well you can buy from places that prevent as much suffering as possible.

They certainly aren't lying there alive all vulnerable.


I do my very best to buy from local farmers who treat their animals kindly. It matters.

[Chan790]

10. Rebuttal without words.

[Bluebear]

13. You signed up to lecture us on shrimp?

[Nuclear Unicorn]

12. Kinda creepy but its their culture

Can't say that I support the practice but no people are being harmed and lots of cultures have things I find discomforting.

[Shell Beau]

15. I do agree that I can't get behind what many cultures do and believe.

But we don't have to make them part of our culture. We should be trying to rid our culture first of animal cruelty. Not add to it.