Whenever I give a lecture on lobsters, someone in the audience usually asks me if I still eat lobsters after everything I've learned about them. The answer is a complicated yes; I take the opportunity to talk about the ethics of killing lobsters for food -- one of my favorite subjects.

Key to the question of lobster killing is the debate over whether or not lobsters feel pain when boiled alive; I address this in detail at the end of my book, THE SECRET LIFE OF LOBSTERS. I even picked a fight last fall with the novelist David Foster Wallace, after he penned a strange article in Gourmet magazine decrying the death of lobsters; you can read my complaints about Wallace in an interview I gave to the online magazine Salon, here.

Wallace aside, the people I most take issue with in this debate are the folks at PeTA -- People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals. Personally, I agree with PeTA that lobsters might feel pain (which is why I kill lobsters quickly, before I boil them). But beyond that I disagree with PeTA -- to me, their obsession with saving lobsters from the pot is a costly misallocation of moral concern, especially when there is so much that is good about eating lobster, including the fact that for the most part, lobster is one of the world's few sustainably harvested seafoods. And if there's one thing I've learned about lobsters, it's that they are not sentient creatures in the sense that cows and pigs are (FYI, I don't eat much pork, beef, or chicken, and when I do, I try to stick to the free-range varieties).

However, in the past few days I've found myself in partial agreement with PeTA over a recent piece of news. Several alert readers sent me this AP news release, which reports on a Norwegian study that has concluded that lobsters probably don't feel pain when boiled alive.

In the article, PeTA's suspicion that the government-funded research study was biased in favor of industry seems to me plausible. Norway's fishing industry is large and influential, and the small Norwegian lobster, Nephrops norvegicus (the tails of which are often sold breaded as "scampi"), is the third most valuable commercial species in the North Sea.

That said, the PeTA spokesperson goes on to suggest that the lobster study is equivalent to the tobacco industry claiming that smoking isn't bad for you. Now there's a thought. Perhaps this could be a marketing slogan for the lobster industry: "So good it's addictive. And watch out: those claws could kill you."

But my favorite section of the article was the "meet and greet" reference:

"Many consumers will always hesitate at placing lobsters in boiling pots of water. New Englanders may feel comfortable cooking their lobsters, but people outside the region often feel uneasy about boiling a live creature, said Kristen Millar, executive director of the Maine Lobster Promotion Council. 'Consumers don't generally greet and meet an animal before they eat it,' she said."

Hello, lobster.

Comments? E-mail me.

My mother made this lobsterman's Valentine's Day card back when I was a kid.

Hope you haul up a heart.