Switzerland goes for Cuckmate, bans boiling lobsters alive.

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Lobsters taste so good that many of us are willing to shrug at the somewhat barbaric method by which we oversee their painful demise in a cauldron of boiling water. This time-honored tradition of using medieval execution techniques on crustaceans ensures maximum freshness, so we say, but it also poses some pretty obvious animal welfare issues.

Now, the Swiss government is stepping in to make sure that lobster is prepared in the least gruesome way possible within its mountainous borders. According to Agence France-Presse, the Swiss government announced that “the practice of plunging live lobsters into boiling water, which is common in restaurants, is no longer permitted” as of March 1.


Logistically speaking, the government order declares that live lobsters will have to be “stunned” before being boiled, and “only electric shock or the ‘mechanical destruction’ of the lobster’s brain will be accepted methods of stunning the animals once the new rule takes [e]ffect.“ Mechanically destroying a lobster’s brain might sound brutal, but given growing evidence that lobsters feel pain, a pretty instant death via knife or electrical charge is arguably much more humane than the ol' bubbling cauldron of death.

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