Lobster jolt more humane: inventor

A British inventor is hoping his lobster-killing device which zaps them with electricity as an alternative to boiling them alive will give the Maritime lobster industry a jolt.

Entrepreneur Simon Buckhaven said the CrustaStun system is a more humane way of killing lobsters and crabs, so the crustaceans feel no pain.

"We deliver a current, very small current," he said. "It's about one amp per lobster and 1.3 amps per crab. And that renders the crab or lobster unconscious in less than half a second."

Buckhaven said sustaining that current for five seconds for lobsters and 10 seconds for crabs would destroy their nervous systems, effectively killing them.

The inventor and his company, Studham Technologies Limited, have been developing the CrustaStun over the past decade.

Prototypes have been sold to seafood processors in the United Kingdom, but the company has recently developed a model capable of plugging into North American and mainland European power grids.

Industrial-sized CrustaStuns, which can process up to 2,265 kilograms of lobster an hour, are made by Charlottetown Metal Products in P.E.I.

Buckhaven is hoping to have a home version on the market by next year.

"It's really like going into a hospital and having an anesthetic injection," he said about what the crustaceans experience in his device.

"For but a very short time, you feel uncomfortable as the needle goes in and in this case, as the current goes in. And thereafter, you're unconscious."

He said it can take a lobster two to three minutes to die in boiling water and he wanted to find a way to make that death happen in less time.

With a growing awareness in animal welfare, Buckhaven said he hopes the CrustaStun will become the industry standard, with its use enforced by law in Europe. He added that the device has the support of the animal rights group PETA.

'They're insects'

Chef Dennis Johnson at Fid Resto in downtown Halifax prefers the traditional method of plunging a live lobster into boiling water, and he said he doesn't feel bad about it.

"Not at all," he said. "They're insects."

He said neither the $100,000 industrial-size version nor the $3,500 home version would make its way into his restaurant anytime soon.

"It sounds like an awfully expensive piece of equipment to do that," said Johnson. "It makes for an interesting discussion, but when [customers] are eating their lobster they really don't think too much about it."

Colin MacDonald, the chief executive officer of Clearwater Seafoods, is also not sold on the idea.

"A lobster has a very simple nervous system. It wouldn't have anything similar to what we would call pain," he said.

"If it satisfies some portion of the market, and if people feel comfortable paying $3,000 for a piece of equipment to electrocute a lobster to death, then I guess that's their decision."