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Robert F. Bukaty/AP/File
Some House of Lords members (the UK’s upper House of Parliament) believe the bill should go further and include certain invertebrates. It would recognize that all shellfish feel pain.
Speaking during the House of Lords debate in June, Baroness Janet Fookes said she was “shocked by some of the treatment of animals, such as lobsters, crabs and squid, in the way they have been stored and, very often, killed.”
Maisie Tomlinson, co-director of Crustacean Compassion, a campaign group that lobbies for welfare rights for decapod crustaceans, said that lobsters are undoubtedly sentient beings. She said studies by professor Robert Ellwood at Queen’s University in Belfast tested the theory and proved that crustaceans retain a memory of a painful experience. These studies also examined whether decapods (shrimp, crab, lobster) had the capacity to weigh competing courses of action to avoid electric shock — “and they did,” she said.