Norway, New Zealand, and Austria have banned the boiling of live crustaceans on ethical grounds, and similar legislation is now being proposed in the United Kingdom. The fishing industry is therefore investigating whether electric shocks could be used to stun the animals before cooking.

Painful Electric Shocks

However, more research is needed into how crustaceans react to pain in order to develop the most humane slaughter method. If these animals are not shocked correctly, it could be very painful.

“There is already evidence that decapod crustaceans exhibit signs of discomfort and stress when exposed to injuries such as forced removal of a claw. Our latest experiments show that Norway lobsters react adversely to electric shocks, which are painful to humans,” said Lynne Sneddon, Professor of zoophysiology at the University of Gothenburg.

In a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers observed that when Norway lobsters were exposed to electric shocks in water, they attempted to escape by rapidly flipping their tails. However, if the Norway lobster were treated in advance with common painkillers, tail flipping decreased or was eliminated when they were exposed to the potentially painful electric shocks.

Similar Function

“The fact that painkillers developed for humans also work on Norway lobsters shows how similar we function. That’s why it’s important to care about how we treat and kill crustaceans, just as we do with chickens and cows,” said Lynne Sneddon.

The researchers gave the Norway lobsters pain relief before the electric shock using two different painkillers, aspirin and lidocaine, which had slightly different effects. The aspirin was injected into the Norway lobsters, causing the animals to start grooming their legs and claws, which is a sign of stress. At the same time, tail flipping decreased when they received the electric shock. The lidocaine was dissolved in water with relatively few side effects and also acted to prevent tail flips. Thus, both drugs seem to have a pain-relieving effect.

Gentler Experiments

“Our results emphasize the importance of ethical responsibility for the welfare of crustaceans not only in the food industry. There are campaigns to include these crustaceans in the science laws, where we must reduce pain in laboratory animals. This study can help inform how to make experiments gentler for the animal with the use of pain-relieving drugs. We need to do further experiments to find out the most humane way to treat and kill crustaceans if we still want them as food in the future,” said Lynne Sneddon.