New Lobster Zapper Said to Be More Humane

(MYFOX NATIONAL) - A British company has designed a machine that they say zaps lobsters with an electric charge and kills them more humanely than boiling them. The company believes the CrustaStun will revolutionize the food and lobster industry, while addressing people's growing concerns about cruelty to animals.

The CrustaStun electrocutes lobsters with a 110-volt shock, killing them in five seconds instead of the two minutes in boiling water. The lobsters feel no "pain or distress," said company founder Simon Buckhaven to The Chronicle Herald .

"I am entirely aware this product will be greeted at first with some skepticism among people in the lobster industry in Eastern Canada and northeastern United States," continued Buckhaven, of what he called the world's first crustacean stunner.

He believes that the animal rights movement in Europe and America is getting stronger and that people will want another method of killing crustaceans other than boiling them.

Earlier this month, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals brought two of the stunners and planned to have the company demonstrate them at a lobster dinner fundraiser sponsored by the non-profit Child and Family Resource Centre in Tucson, Ariz. Unfortunately the machines were lost by UPS. About 1,800 live lobsters had to be cooked in the traditional boiling manner, reported The Arizona Daily Star .

"It's a total nightmare," said Lindsay Rajt of PETA. But the center said that they would consider using the machine next year.

Buckhaven explained that the idea for a lobster stunner came to him back in 1997 when he was buying lobster at the fish store for the first time. He was unaware that boiling lobsters was common practice. To him, "the idea that a living animal with eyes, a nervous system and a sensory system was incapable of feeling pain simply did not seem right," he told The New York Times .

The machine, which made Time magazine's Best Inventions list, costs about $3,500 and sit in a kitchen like a microwave.