The Most Humane Way to Kill a Lobster by Duncan Macmillan

Lobster Body Composition

Lobster is distinguished by its high nutritional value and is expensive food. They also attract people thanks to their unique look made up of many different parts.

The shell is the skeleton of the lobster and it cannot grow. Did you know that soft shell lobster has less meat than hard-shell lobster? The lobster’s blood is colorless and when exposed to oxygen, it turns blue. The blue color is due to the iron that the lobster’s body uses to transport oxygen.

The most interesting part is the lobster’s brain located in its throat. Instead of the brain, their kidneys are in the head. Furthermore, the lower part of the lobster, which is the abdomen, is the site of the nervous system. A lobster’s nervous system is very primitive and similar to that of an insect. It has only about 100,000 nerve cells, compared with more than 100 billion of the human.

How To Kill A Lobster?

1. Prepare the necessary lobster utensils to make lobster meat. Tools that need to be prepared in the processing of lobster are knives, scissors and cutting boards, small clean towels, gloves.
2. Wash the lobster. When buying lobster, wash it, scrub away the dust that is on the lobster. Then cut 2 lobster antennae and lobster legs.
3. Kill the lobster. There are several ways to kill a lobster before you put it in the pot. But the safest way is to put the lobster in the coldest part of the refrigerator or use ice to slow it down. The temperature you should keep your lobster cold is around 40 degrees F in an hour. 

Then there are those who believe that a combination of the two is best: After freezing for 30 minutes, place the lobster lying down on the cutting board. Then point the chef’s knife just below where the claw meets and quickly cut through the head. The leg will continue to move a little after that but the lobster is practically dead.

Or you can put the lobster straight into boiling water, at this time the cold lobster encounters a sudden rapid increase in temperature that will make its nervous system numb.

Use a sharp knife to stab the lobster head

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Inhumane Methods of Stunning and Slaughter

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Many of the current methods used to prepare decapods for consumption are actually ineffective and inhumane.

Chilling

For example, chilling decapods (in a fridge, freezer or on ice) is sometimes mistakenly used in an attempt to stun them before slaughter. However, whilst this process may make the animal appear still, there is no evidence to suggest that chilling induces unconsciousness or anaesthesia, rather than just paralysing them (6). In fact, chilling beforehand increases the time taken for them to lose consciousness and die in boiling water. Therefore, decapod crustaceans should not be subjected to chilling for the purposes of stunning or killing.

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Boiling

Similarly, boiling alive is a commonly used method of slaughter, but is not humane. When boiled alive, lobsters and crabs often thrash, try to escape, and shed their limbs, known to be a sign of stress. It can take up to 3 minutes for them to lose consciousness in boiling water (5), which is an unacceptable length of time to suffer.

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Based on current scientific evidence, the following methods are considered inhumane and should not be used on decapod crustaceans:

• Live, conscious boiling

• Chilling in the fridge, freezer or in an ice slurry

• Dismemberment of live animals

• Freshwater drowning 

• Electrical killing

• High pressure processing

• High salt solution

• CO2 gassing

• Chemical anaesthetics

To find out more about these methods, head to our policy page.

Do Lobsters Feel Pain?

Research indicates that the lobster has no central nervous system or cerebral cortex to register stimuli. It's more like an insect—lobstermen often refer to them as such. While this makes it likely that it cannot feel pain, there is still some debate. Some studies have shown reactions of some sort to a stimulus in lobster and crab. That may be caused by pain, but it remains unclear.

Whether it is believed the lobsters experience pain or not, killing the lobster just before cooking is the preferred method. Perhaps this is for the benefit of the cook as a way to minimize trauma since most people are disconnected from the killing of animals they eat. This approach is also promoted by chefs who discovered that the lobster’s muscles toughen with the shock of hitting the boiling water, meaning the meat will not be as tender.

In Switzerland and some parts of Italy, cooking live lobster is banned. The animals are often stunned with electricity or killed in some manner before cooking. Electric lobster stunning devices are available. At a cost of a few thousand dollars, however, they're unreasonable for most home cooks who enjoy the occasional lobster.

Professional chefs who regularly work with lobsters are equally divided on the issue. Generally, they use one of the methods to dispatch the lobster before cooking. It's always done quickly and speed seems to be the consensus on the most humane way to approach the task.

The least humane way is to dismember a lobster without killing it first—or at least stunning it with cold. In some restaurants, chefs would remove the tail and legs while the lobster was still alive then skewer it with a deadly blow. Microwaving is considered another inhumane option.

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