Stop selling live lobsters at supermarkets!

Let's face it, folks - Many people feel comfortable about cooking and eating lobsters.  But what they don't know or realize is that like all animals, lobsters feel pain, and they suffer when they are cut, broiled, or boiled alive.  These social sea animals do not have automated nervous systems to put them into a state of shock when they are harmed.  Therefore, marine biologists theorize that lobsters feel every second of pain inflicted upon them before their death.  According to Dr. Jaren G. Horsley, an invertebrate zoologist at the National Zoo, lobsters have a sophisticated nervous system and feel a great deal of pain when cut or cooked alive.  In fact, boiling lobsters alive is illegal in Reggio, Italy.  Offenders there face fines of up to $600.

Supermarkets have been selling live lobsters for years, citing that their supply and demand criteria need to be met.  In other words, if people ask for it, they get it.  So, let's get what we're asking for!  Let's tell supermarkets across the U.S. and Canada that selling live lobsters is unethical, gruesome and unnecessary! 

The next time you pass Lobster Death Row in your local supermarket, stop for a moment and consider this:  studies confirm that lobsters kept in tanks suffer from stress associated with confinement, low oxygen levels, overcrowding and starvation, not to mention the terrible stress of being ripped from their homes.   Before ever getting to market, lobsters in unattended traps often succumb to death by starvation, dehydration, heat, or fights with other lobsters.  During transportation and storage, they suffer from dehydration, red-tail bacterial disease, shell disease, and "bumper car" disease as a result of extremely crowded conditions. Rough handing of lobsters, including being thrown, causes open wounds and lesions.  They also suffer from an inability to breathe properly in air, which results in acidosis and toxin buildup.  A Canadian study found that 19 percent of lobsters had a missing claw when they arrived at factories and packing stations.  In Australia's Western rock lobster fishery, an average of 20 percent of the lobsters arrive at the factory too weak to be considered fit for live export.  Mortality rates often reach 10 to 15 percent.

Scientists at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Mass., who have been studying lobsters for more than 20 years, have found them to be unique and fascinating animals.  They have found, for instance, that lobsters use complicated signals to establish social relationships.  They take long-distance seasonal journeys, can travel more than 100 miles in a year, and can live to be more than 150 years old if they survive the world's most devastating predator: humans.

Let's bring an end to the unnecessary, gluttonous and cruel practice of imprisoning lobsters and sentencing them to death for no other crime than being too slow and docile to avoid capture.

If you would like to put a stop to the selling of live lobsters at supermarkets, please sign and forward this petition!  We CAN and DO make a difference!