Oops...lobsters and crabs CAN feel pain, after all...

There's a growing body of evidence that means the food industry needs to come up with a more humane way to kill shellfish before they are prepared for human consumption.  It turns out that shellfish like lobsters and crabs can not only feel pain, but will seek to avoid it if they can.  We (try, mostly) to humanely kill our other animal food sources -- at the very least we acknowledge they feel pain. One is not allowed to be cruel by tearing the legs off a live animal, for example. But this is a practice that is done every day in the shellfish industry and in the food preparation of shellfish around the world. I wonder what world culinary and fishing reaction will be...considering the complete lack of action on the almost extinction levels of tuna (it's not cuddly, so its hard to get people to care it might go extinct shortly), I'm not very hopeful... :(

Read one of many articles surfacing about this latest study here.

Edit: This is a great post from a while back on Trevor Corson's old blog, discussing humane ways to dispatch lobsters when preparing them in your home. An interesting read!