On the heels of the news that Switzerland now requires chefs to stun lobsters before boiling them, a report from New Orleans TV station WVUE says crawfish are wired the same as lobsters. There’s no reason to think the crustaceans feel pain, crustacean expert Greg Lutz said.
“Psychologically, there is no reason to believe or expect that a crustacean has the nervous system to process and feel pain. They simply are not equipped with that. A crustacean’s nervous system is a lot like an insect’s nervous system,” the LSU professor said.
The Lobster Institute at the University of Maine agrees.
“For an organism to perceive pain it must have a more complex nervous system,” the institute says on its website.
Crawfish are big business in Louisiana. According to LSU, the annual haul is 127.5 million pounds, a catch worth $172.1 million. The state has over 95 percent of U.S. crawfish production.
The U.S. sold about $368,000 worth of live lobster – most of it from Maine – to Switzerland in 2016, according to trade analyst company WISERtrade.
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