The UK may soon ban boiling lobsters alive in a landmark bill that acknowledges that crustaceans and mollusks, too, are sentient beings

Zoologist here. It is basically impossible to comply with this law in a way that is affordable or practical.

the best way to humanely kill a lobster is by electrically stunning it

First off, this is a staggeringly stupid thing to say. We do not have the apparatus to safely do this, there is no such thing as a shock-tank for lobsters, certainly not available to the average person cooking at home . What will probably happen is people will _try_ to shock lobsters and end up injuring/killing themselves in the process, but then, this statement comes from some PETA-like organization, public safety is hardly a high priority for those wackjobs.

There is no easily-identifiable brain in a large crustacean, instead of a brain they have thickened nerve centers, like a spinal chord, is diffused and difficult to tell apart from the surrounding flesh. This can run several centimeters along the body length, or in a ring behind the eyes. The only physical way to destroy this would be to cut the carapace open and "mangle" the area this thickened nerve is likely to occupy. You cannot perform a simple decapitation on these animals, as there is no clear area to decapitate. A single stabbing thrust isn't enough to destroy the neural ganglion, you're going to need to dig in there and really smoosh it up.

Back when I was a student, we used to dispatch crustacea by either freezing them slowly in water until the water started to ice up to the body, or kill them with some sort of anaesthetizing poison. The former isn't exactly great for cooking an animal fresh, the latter renders the animal inedible to people.

This law basically criminalizes the consumption of fresh seafood as we know it, and puts it further out of the reach of ordinary people cooking at home.

/r/worldnews Thread Link - insider.com