The Welsh Government says boiling lobsters alive is wrong – but that’s not enough
Mike Hedges – MS for Gŵyr Abertawe
The Welsh Government has acknowledged that boiling lobsters alive is not an acceptable method of slaughter. It is working with Defra, the other devolved governments, and industry to develop guidance on the humane killing of lobsters and other decapod crustaceans. Welsh ministers also confirmed that the Animal Welfare Committee is examining the welfare of decapods throughout the UK supply chain.
This announcement comes in response to a letter from The Animal Law Foundation, 42 other animal-protection organisations and legal experts, who called on the Welsh Government to acknowledge that the live boiling of lobsters and crabs is incompatible with existing Welsh animal-welfare law.
The Government’s recent acceptance that live boiling is indeed unacceptable is an important and welcome first step, but more still needs to be done.
In restaurants and kitchens across Wales, lobsters continue to be dropped alive and fully conscious into pans of boiling water. Scientific evidence gathered by the London School of Economics shows that it can take more than two minutes for lobsters killed in this way to die, and that the process can cause severe and prolonged pain.
Other methods of killing lobsters also exist that cause less suffering when performed correctly and competently by a trained person – for example, whole-body longitudinal splitting, which should take no more than ten seconds.
In 2022 alone, 159 tonnes of European lobsters and 340 tonnes of brown crabs were caught in Welsh waters. This represents hundreds of thousands of individual animals.
The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 recognises decapod crustaceans – including lobsters – as sentient beings. They have experiences of their own and are capable of feeling pleasure, pain, and distress.
Lobsters are also protected under the Welfare of Animals at the Time of Killing (Wales) Regulations 2014. Those Regulations prohibit the causing or permitting of avoidable pain, distress, or suffering to lobsters when they are killed.
We know lobsters feel pain, and we know that this pain is avoidable. The Welsh Government’s acknowledgement that boiling animals alive is unacceptable is therefore significant. It recognises the welfare principles at the heart of the existing law.
The next step must be to turn that principle into practical application.
A broader review of welfare throughout the decapod supply chain is welcome. It should not, however, delay action on a specific killing method for which the scientific evidence and law is already clear.
Guidance cannot be allowed to become a substitute for immediate clarity, or a reason to postpone the protection to which these animals are already legally entitled.
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We can avoid this problem and many others by having a vegetarian diet
Well said.
What? JUST EVERYONE? Have you even remotely thought this through? I’d assume not, so meantime more pragmatic people are seeking solution to this callous method of slaughter – a tiny bit more pragmatic I’d think…
“to develop guidance on the humane killing of lobsters and other decapod crustaceans.”
How exactly do we HUMANELY KILL anything?? Ask if it wants a priest?
Nonsense. . I’ve seen lobsters screaming for several minutes after being thrown in the pots. There’s less painful quicker scientifically proven methods out there.
I was being sarcastic / facetious / ironic! The HUMANE way is NOT TO KILL, anything. Vegetables included, obviously.
Lobsters or any other crustacean are incapzble of screa.ming.
The noise you,ve heard is due to air and liquids boiling and escaping from under the carapace of the aniimal
Not a nice way for an animal to die but they don,t scream in pain.
I won’t eat these on principle and am surprised that otherwise compassionate people who may think they are kind do so. Plunging them in boiling water is a barbaric thing to do to any living creature. Solutions are very simple – as many kinder chefs take a knife first for a far far swifter end… Hate the term ‘ban’ but do it. Nothing will change in real terms at restaurants only a kinder death.
I’m glad with everything happening in the world that our polticians are getting to grips with Wales’ lobster boiling crisis.
Some governments can address more than one issue at a tme.
Maybe not labour or tory ones granted
Don’t, just don’t, I take it you are not in Wales…
“Guidance cannot be allowed to become a substitute for immediate clarity, or a reason to postpone the protection to which these animals are already legally entitled” writes Labour’s Mike Hedges (and i agree with him on that). If i also might make a couple of pertinent observations : 1) nobody in the plaid welsh govt is taling about ‘postponing’ protection for lobsters, indeed he states himself that the Plaid govt acknowledges that boiling animals alive is unacceptable. 2) Mike Hedges Labour party were in govt in Wales for 27 years (and Mike himself has been in the Senedd since 2011)… Read more »
I have broached this subject in the past but Wales is a deadly place for wildlife of all kinds, left at the end of the track by carrion for their feathered, I was going to say carrion friends but I remember roads lined with avian gibbets.
Popular in Powis they were for both crows and criminals…
A violent nation, so the prevailing winds inform, why ?