Do lobsters feel pain?
As lobsters look set to be recognised under the Animal Sentience Bill, we look at the scientific evidence that they can feel pain when being boiled alive.
In a landmark and unbelievably overdue move, Ministers look set to ban boiling lobsters alive after recognising them as sentient beings.
The Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill, which was introduced in May and will recognise animal sentience in law for the first time, currently only applies to vertebrates (animals with a backbone). However, the government is now preparing to extend it to lobsters, crabs, octopuses, squids, and some other invertebrates.
Lobsters are subjected to one of the most horrific acts of human violence toward animals imaginable, and are routinely boiled alive while being prepared as ‘food’.
The issue facing lobsters is emotive and extremely distressing, made worse by the fact that there is so much public reluctance to accept the scientific evidence that they feel the pain caused by the method of their killing.
Unlike vertebrates covered by the Animal Welfare Act of 2006 - which include cows, pigs and sheep - lobsters have never been given any sort of protection under the law.
While the protections offered to farmed mammals are far too minimal and often not enforced, it is still against the law to kill them in a similar manner to lobsters. This is due to the fact that the vast majority of people are aware that they feel pain.
The move to include lobsters in the new Bill hopefully indicates that the public ambivalence toward them is shifting. Here, we explain the science that makes the case for this move.
Can lobsters feel pain?
While there is no absolute consensus, there is a great deal of scientific evidence that indicates lobsters can feel pain. So strong is this evidence, that it is already against the law to boil them alive in a number of countries including Switzerland, Norway and New Zealand.
The argument that lobsters don’t feel pain often rests on the fact that they have a different brain structure to humans, but this link has been called into question by a number of scientists.
Robert Elwood, emeritus professor at the school of biological sciences at Queen’s University Belfast, told the Guardian in 2018: “The argument is: we know the areas involved in pain experienced in humans; if you don’t have those areas, you can’t feel pain. But it’s quite clear that, in evolution, completely different structures have arisen to have exactly the same function – crustaceans don’t have a visual cortex anything like that of a human, but they can see. Given the evolutionary advantage of experiencing pain, there is no reason to assume they should not have this protection against tissue damage.”
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Jaren G. Horsley, Ph.D, agrees that a lobsters’ nervous systems likely enable them to feel pain. He said, according to PETA: “As an invertebrate zoologist who has studied crustaceans for a number of years, I can tell you the lobster has a rather sophisticated nervous system that, among other things, allows it to sense actions that will cause it harm. … [Lobsters] can, I am sure, sense pain.”
What’s more, due to their possible inability to experience shock-related pain-relief, which humans do, lobsters may even have the capacity to feel more pain than us.
Invertebrate zoologist Jaren G. Horsley said: “The lobster does not have an autonomic nervous system that puts it into a state of shock when it is harmed. It probably feels itself being cut. … I think the lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open … [and] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed” during cooking.
Even putting physiological evidence aside, proof that lobsters feel pain can surely be found by looking at how they react to their murder. When lobsters are lowered into boiling water, they will scrabble at the side of the pot in a desperate attempt to get out. This was described as ‘unnecessary torture’ by researcher Gordon Gunter in the journal Science.
One of the first major works on the issue of crustacean pain came from Foster Wallace in 2004. In an essay titled Consider the Lobster, he wrote: "After all the abstract intellection, there remain the facts of the frantically clanking lid, the pathetic clinging to the edge of the pot. Standing at the stove, it is hard to deny in any meaningful way that this is a living creature experiencing pain and wishing to avoid/escape the painful experience.”
A great deal of the counter-arguments that claim lobsters cannot feel pain come from the extremely unobjective source of the lobster industry. In response to the mounting science against their claims, however, even they seem to be struggling to put forward a good case.
Greg Irvine, the executive director of the Lobster Council of Canada, previously said that the ‘jury is still out’ on a lobster’s capacity for pain, adding: “There's no real scientific consensus on whether they feel pain if they're boiled, but it's the most traditional way to do it."
As tradition isn’t any sort of argument for the continued abuse of animals, it looks like the lobster industry is running out of excuses.
Why are lobsters boiled alive?
Lobsters are supposedly boiled alive so as to minimise the chances of them passing on food poisoning to the consumer.
They, along with other shellfish, have a number of harmful bacteria on their flesh. After they are killed, the bacteria can multiply and release toxins that may not be destroyed by cooking.
Rather than conclude that the best thing to do is probably to leave them alone and not eat them, boiling them alive was considered the best way to reduce this risk.
Despite all the evidence outlined above, it still cannot be argued that there is absolute proof that lobsters feel pain. But just because the subject is debatable, that doesn’t mean we should keep abusing them until we have an answer.
Even if it were true that they didn’t feel pain, that does not mean we have a right to take their life. There is no justification for lobsters - or any farmed animal - to be killed in any way at all, other than the momentary pleasure they provide their consumer. Lobsters can live up to 100 years in the wild, and deserve to experience every minute of that life away from human abuse.
Read more: Should we really care if fish feel pain?
Polly Foreman is a writer and digital journalist based in London. Since going vegan in 2014, Polly has stood firmly against all forms of animal oppression and exploitation. She is passionate about tackling misconceptions of veganism and challenging accepted norms about the way we use animals in this country.
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