This is a real-life lobster if you never saw
one, and it may surprise you to know that
it is green.
They are boiled in large, out of door kettles.
Now they are red.
“Still, 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.”
That was the late David Foster Wallace in
his 2004 piece for Gourmet Magazine, “Consider
the Lobster,” recounting his experience
at the Maine Lobster Festival, one of the
largest such events in the world.
There, and around the globe, lobsters, crabs,
and other crustaceans are killed in ways that
most people would consider cruel if done to
a pig, chicken, or cow—including boiling
alive, dismembering alive, or even eating
them alive.
But should we feel differently about crustaceans,
like these crabs, frantically reaching out for
anything to grab onto to avoid going into
the pot?
Or, perhaps more to the point…do crustaceans
feel pain?
Boiling alive.
It’s a
fate that even centuries ago was reserved
for the worst or at least, more-specific crimes.
In 1531, King Henry VIII made boiling alive
THE form of execution for those convicted
of poisoning someone to death.
But after just 16 years, it was repealed by
Edward VI (he looks much nicer, that tracks).
Even back then, boiling someone alive just
seemed so…extra.
But today, boiling alive and steaming alive, to many, is the accepted method
of death for crustaceans like lobsters and
crabs, despite videos like these, in which
this lobster is seen thrashing against the
sides of a boiling pot.
This is because some have convinced themselves
that crustaceans don’t feel pain like humans
do…or even like pigs, chickens, and cows
do.
But is there evidence to support that idea?
My name is Dan Paden and I am Director of
Evidence Analysis for PETA.
Dan Paden reviews the hundreds or even thousands
of hours of footage that comes in from PETA
investigations, working with law enforcement
and the press, to try and get the abuse documented
in those investigations stopped.
In 2013 we had an eye witness work at Linda
Beans Maine Lobster which was a lobster and
crab slaughterhouse operated by the LL Bean
heiress, so a woman by the name of Linda Bean.
Yep, the same people who brought you those
status symbol-solidifying monogrammed backpacks
were also, apparently, in the lobster and
crab slaughter business.
Dark!
But, unfortunately, it gets darker.
Lobsters and crabs were literally being torn
apart while they were fully conscious.
The lobsters – their claws were ripped off
first.
Then they were shoved backwards into, essentially
a steel shoehorn.
Their abdomen was separated from their head.
Their head was tossed onto a conveyer belt
and sent to the trash.
The rest of their body, while everything is
squirming, torn in two and the tail was kept.
And the tail was what was sold, along with
the claw meat.
The rest of their bodies were essentially
pitched away for trash.
The crabs were also torn apart while still
fully conscious.
They were shoved, essentially face first,
into a steel spike.
Their top shell was then ripped off, that
exposed their – for lack of a better term
– back, essentially.
Which was just tissue and nerves.
And that was shoved up against a rotating
stiff bristled brush, and that brush destroyed
and tore off their internal organs.
Then they were pitched onto a belt, taken
up a conveyer, and dumped very slowly into
boiling water while they were alive and, again,
fully conscious.
That’s pretty overwhelming, especially for
the first-ever investigation into a lobster
and crab slaughterhouse.
So, if we take what our eyes—and the workers
at the plant—are telling us, it’s clear
that these animals were fully alive when they
were torn apart, and even hours later.
But the question then remains—is the writhing
and struggling movement you see here a signal
of pain?
Well my name is Bob Elwood.
I am a professor of animal behavior at Queens
University in Belfast Northern Ireland.
Dr. Elwood has been studying crustaceans species
for decades.
But his study of crustacean pain specifically
started after a seemingly innocent run in
at a local pub.
There, waiting for his dinner at a bar, was
a famous TV seafood chef.
And so I thought I’d tease him a bit, as
is typical in an Irish pub.
And I said that we have a mutual interest
in crustacea.
I said, I study their behavior, and you cook
them.
And he just looked at me and said, do they
feel pain?
And I thought to myself, what a ridiculous
question.
But I was polite, and I discussed what kind
it was, and how it had functions to the animal
and it was a possibility.
And this got Elwood thinking—just how would
someone prove that an animal—any animal
feels pain?
The idea that simply because an animal moves
away if you give it what might be a noxious
stimulus is not evidence of pain because pain
comprises two aspects.
There is something called nociception.
Nociception is the body’s perception of
a potentially painful stimulus that triggers
a reflex response.
Think touching a hot stove and pulling back
before you’ve even begun to feel the burn.
But that isn’t the same as actually feeling
pain, which makes the study of pain so difficult.
That’s the first difficulty.
I can do lots of things to crabs that will
make them run away, and that doesn’t help
me in answering the question.
Not to mention a previous scientific consensus
that when crustaceans were writhing about
or scraping against the sides of a boiling,
pot, that it was just a reflex, and not actual
pain.
The general feeling in science, before the
turn of the century, was these animals act
by reflex response.
There is no need to insert pain.
And I guess when I start here, I thought,
that’s probably what world it’s going
to be.
And so he knew that if he was really going
to see if crustaceans felt pain, he couldn’t
just rely on a reflex response.
Instead, he looked at two main behaviors.
The first: avoidance learning.
Ellwood discovered that crabs would learn
to avoid a negative stimulus after just a
few trials, which was rapid learning.
And I don’t think that can be explained
by a reflex response.
And the second, and perhaps more telling,
behavior he examined was called a motivational
trade-off.
Elwood found that hermit crabs were less likely
to get out of their shell after a negative
stimulus if the shell they had was of good
quality, meaning they were trading off the
discomfort with the need to keep a good quality
shell.
So, that isn’t a reflex.
If it was a reflex, we would see the same
tendency to get out of the shell, irrespective
of the other ecological conditions.
So Elwood couldn’t just chalk up these behaviors
to a reflex—pulling the hand away from the
hot stove—because the response to the stimulus
was being managed when other factors were
in play.
So the old explanation of the actions of crabs,
simply acting by no susceptive reflex, I could
at least say, is not correct.
Elwood published his findings about a year
before PETA released its investigation into
Linda Bean’s Maine Lobster, so we asked
his opinion.
They are dismembered in some processes without
being killed.
Which is, I think that’s wrong.
It’ wrong because – not because I know,
or I can say that they experience pain, but
because I can show that they find treatments
such as these aversive.
They find tissue damage aversive.
And there is a possibility that they do experience
something unpleasant.
And just because there is that possibility,
some care should be taken.
That’s a growing sentiment.
An Italian court ruled that lobsters can’t
be chilled—a potentially very painful process—before
being killed, and earlier this year Switzerland
passed a law banning boiling lobsters alive
entirely, making stunning lobsters before
killing them mandatory in the country, the
biggest move to protect crustaceans in human
history.
But could that compassion extend to places
like Maine or Maryland, where a recent PETA
billboard calling for compassion towards crabs
caused an uproar?
You do have to take the fight right to where
the animals  are suffering the most, and of
course, if you’re talking about crustaceans,
the state of Maine is high on that list.
I think consumer attitudes, and certainly
laws, lag behind sometimes what scientists
are telling us, what animal behaviorists are
telling us about animals.
And that’s certainly the case for crustaceans.
But I think huge progress has been made for
these animals.
And I think it’s only a matter of time before
Maine and the rest of the United States catches
up to those countries in that regard.
It’s fitting that the same continent that
in medieval times was boiling people alive
is leading the way protecting lobsters from
the same fate today.
After all, as David Foster Wallace continued
in that famous 2004 piece:
“I’m not trying to give you a PETA-like
screed here—at least I don’t think so.
I’m trying, rather, to work out and articulate
some of the troubling questions that arise
amid all the laughter and saltation and community
pride of the Maine Lobster Festival.
The truth is that if you, the Festival attendee,
permit yourself to think that lobsters can
suffer and would rather not, the MLF can begin
to take on aspects of something like a Roman
circus or medieval torture-fest.”
They don’t look like us.
But they sure act like us in important ways,
and, leave them off your plate, accordingly.
Tune in next week for another episode of PETA
Video Answers, and hit subscribe (and that
all-important bell) to stay up to date on
everything happening on PETA’s YouTube channel.
We’ll see you next time.
