The traditional method of boiling lobsters alive causes extreme pain and should be immediately banned under UK law, according to a study.
Scientists have discovered that Norway lobsters – the main ingredient in scampi – can experience pain in a way similar to humans and other mammals.
The researchers found that common painkillers, lidocaine and aspirin, reduce the crustaceans' reactions to harmful electric shocks.
According to the authors, this suggests that lobsters really are feeling pain when they get hurt, rather than simply following mechanical reflexes.
Boiling the animals alive is already illegal in Norway, New Zealand, Austria and several Australian states.
But the researchers say their evidence shows that a ban on boiling should be introduced under UK law, which already regards crustaceans as sentient animals.
Co–author Professor Lynne Sneddon, an animal behaviour expert from the University of Gothenburg, told the Daily Mail: 'Based on scientific evidence, it is not humane to boil crustaceans alive and so I support the concept of banning live boiling.
'We should always seek to end the life of animals humanely, and we would never accept boiling a cow or chicken alive, so it is time to rethink the way we treat these animals.'
Scientists are calling for a ban on boiling lobsters alive, after a study shows that they do feel pain
Researchers found painkillers reduce lobsters' response to damage, illustrated above. This suggests the crustaceans feel pain the same way we do
It is well known that lobsters and other crustaceans react to harmful or damaging inputs from the outside world.
As cold-blooded animals that cannot regulate their own body temperature, they also show an aversion to hot water and actively hide from heat where possible.
However, the question remained whether this really counts as experiencing pain.
Scientists distinguish between two types of response to harm: pain, which is the negative emotional experience associated with damage, and nociception, which is simply turning injury into action.
For example, if you touch a hot stove, you might instinctively pull your hand away before you start to feel the pain of the burn.
For years scientists have been divided over whether lobsters' damage-avoiding behaviour proves they feel pain or simply displays nociception.
In their recent study, Professor Sneddon and her co-authors tried to answer this question by examining how Norway lobsters change their behaviour while on painkillers.
When lobsters received electrical shocks that would be painful for a human, they attempted to escape by rapidly flipping their tails.
Scientists found that the responses of Norway lobsters, which are used to make scampi, show that they do feel intense pain while being boiled alive
Source: Hatfield Marine Science Centre
However, when they were injected with aspirin or had lidocaine dissolved into the water, this tail flipping behaviour all but vanished.
This suggests that lobsters have systems for feeling pain that are closer to our own than previously thought.
Lead author Eleftherios Kasiouras, a PhD student at the University of Gothenburg, told the Daily Mail: 'Responding to painkillers during potentially painful procedures means that what they experience is more than just simple reflexes.
'All that evidence supports that decapod crustaceans experience pain, and if you consider that they are considered sentient in the UK, boiling alive should be banned.'
Edie Bowles, Executive Director at The Animal Law Foundation, told the Daily Mail: 'The boiling of crustaceans alive causes unnecessary, prolonged and intense suffering to sentient animals.'
In December last year, Labour introduced an animal welfare strategy which suggested a ban on boiling crustaceans alive at home or in professional kitchens.
This follows the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022, introduced by the Conservative government in 2022, which officially recognised crustaceans as sentient animals 'capable of experiencing pain and suffering'.
Instead, lobsters and crabs can be killed humanely by driving a knife through the main nervous system in a process known as splitting or spiking.
Meanwhile, scientists suggest that large-scale operations could use powerful electrical shocks to stun or kill crustaceans.
However, not all scientists are convinced that a ban on boiling crustaceans is the right response.
Professor Henrik Lauridsen, of Aarhus University in Denmark, told the Daily Mail: 'In my view it is highly likely that lobsters and other decapods feel pain during live boiling, but it doesn't automatically mean that live boiling should be banned in all situations.'
He compares the situation to that of recreational hunting for birds and mammals, where some level of pain is tolerated to make hunting legal.
For large crustaceans like lobsters and brown crabs, which can easily be killed by spiking or splitting, a ban on boiling is practical and 'makes complete sense'.
However, for smaller crustaceans like prawns Professor Lauridsen argues that a ban on killing by boiling might not be practical or desirable.
He says: 'Mechanical or electrical killing of a hundred or a thousand Baltic prawns fished during recreational fishing is not practically possible in a private setting, and the potential pain during boiling is brief.
'The real question is more of an ethical nature; namely, how much pain can we as a society accept when it comes to the interaction with other species.'
The vast majority of lobsters are born a muddy brown to help them blend in with the murky depths of the ocean.
At one-in-100-million, albino lobsters are the rarest. The crustacean pictured was caught off the coast of Maine in 2017
But every so often a rare genetic defect leads to a more colourful crustacean.
The mutations cause the lobsters to produce too much or too little of a certain protein.
Blue lobsters, which occur at a rate of one-in-2-million, have a defect that triggers the over-production of a certain protein.
Combined with their normal pigmentation, caused by a protein called carotenoid, the protein forms a blue colour.
The one-in-30-million orange lobster gets it colour from a lack of that protein.
They only show the carotenoid pigment, which is bright red, meaning they appear to already be boiled.
At one-in-100-million, albino lobsters are the rarest.
They are born completely white and don't even turn red when you cook them.
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