Lobsters get boiled after CrustaStun gets stuck in Customs
Fat City is running a correction — the event referenced after the jump was not sponsored by
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and the killing of the lobsters was handled by the organizers of
the event, who are not affiliated with PETA. Thanks to Lindsay Rajt — a campaigns division manager with PETA, who was quite quick to point out the error — text from her e-mail to Fat City follows the story.
History has focused on building a better mousetrap, but one British inventor thinks he has finally discovered a better way to kill lobsters. The CrustaStun is the result of British Barrister Simon Buckhaven’s belief that there had to be a more humane way to kill crustaceans than dropping them in boiling water or a putting chef’s knife to their heads.
The CrustaStun looks like an oversized steel computer scanner. Inside the rectangular casing is a steel plate covered by a shallow pool of salt water. Once the lid is closed, the device sends a burst of electric current through the lobster. The current is 2 to 5 amps at 110 volts, which knocks a lobster unconscious before killing it. All of this takes less less than five seconds.
