To the people concerned about the suffering of the fish:

The very first thing the chef does is stun the fish. He knocked it for a loop. He then butchered the fish as quickly and efficiently as he could possibly be while still taking care not to mishandle the more poisonous parts of the fugu. The fish was stunned, and then probably immediately went into shock from all of the damage it receives in such a short time. I would like to believe that under those circumstances it didn’t suffer much or at all.

That might be a naive belief, but there is some reasoning behind it. Pain can kill, but if you overload the nervous system you can put a person in a state of shock without committing murder. The brain flat out ignores the pain because to experience it would be to experience death. It does this via a few chemicals and the brain’s amazing ability to ignore how bad a situation it is in, as if pretending it away will make it go away. Whether someone ends up suffering or not all depends on how long they live afterwards, as shock only lasts temporarily in some cases, the others being the cases where it lasts you the rest of your life.

As to the certain vegans who believe that the death and subsequent cooking of an animal is cruel no matter how you spin it. I wonder if any of you ever ponder these thoughts: What is consciousness, what is sapience, and do plants have these qualities or only animals? Do we define consciousness as having a brain? Do we require a central nervous system to experience suffering? Does having a higher intelligence mean achieving a higher level of sentience?

There are plants that release hormones when being attacked by herbivores, hormones meant to attract the herbivore’s predator. There are plants that actually hunt animals, preying on insects and small lizards. What if plants didn’t exist solely for us to eat? Sure, the fruit of many plants work by having their seeds spread by animals eating them as that is how they breed, but just as we domesticated animals we also domesticated plants by breeding them for our purposes. I don’t dismiss the suffering of animals. I know animals are conscious. It’s plants that I don’t know what to believe.

I also know that the Japanese have been eating fugu for two millennium, and are not likely to stop anytime soon. It’s more likely Americans would stop eating steak first. If it were up to me, I would at least stop them from killing dolphins as they are very intelligent, not to mention it’s also hilarious to watch videos of them humping people and I don’t want the world to ever lose that joy. In a perfect world no life would ever have to be sacrificed so that another might live, and free dolphin humps for everybody!

Maybe one day they’ll invent the Star Trek’s replicators, and everyone will get to eat truly cruelty free steak and bacon.

tl;dr: It’s not War and Peace, you ninny. Man up and read a few paragraphs.