Like All Animals, Lobsters Experience Pain

Cooking Lobsters | Meat Your Future
Original photo credit: AP Photo / Robert F. Bukaty

Is it okay to cook animals alive?

We often boil lobsters, crabs, crawfish and other crustaceans alive when we cook them.

When we hear them rattling around the pot, we ease our discomfort by telling ourselves they don’t feel pain. But is that accurate?

Researchers from Queen’s University in Belfast don’t think so, and express concern about how these animals have no protections and are frequently declawed and boiled alive (link to their paper below).

Not that the way pigs, chickens, cows and other animals used for food are killed any “better” (and, as a matter of fact, many are also burned and drowned to death when improperly “stunned” or “processed” and therefore still alive and not unconscious when dunked in boiling water to de-feather them or remove their hair).

The good news is we don’t have to participate in this heinous and unnecessary torture of animals, simply by choosing not to consume them (whether lobster, fish, pig, chicken, cow, or any other animal).


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