Lobsters & crabs are risky to eat unless they are very fresh (i.e. they have not been dead for too long). If you buy a dead lobster and then cook it, you have much less assurance about when it died hence the freshness than with a live lobster.

If you buy a live lobster, how are you going to practically kill it before boiling it? Try to penetrate the hard shell to impale the brain using a layperson's skills and equipment and risk slicing off a digit?

Perhaps it would be best if the fishmonger or grocery store seafood department worker were to pith it for you at time of sale. They can have proper training and safety equipment (a sharp knife and a cut-resistant glove), and you get an assurance of time of death.

No, because there are still many hours until it's going to be cooked.

>> Lobsters & crabs are risky to eat unless they are very fresh

Maybe another good reason to...not eat them as much.

Also very insulting to cultures around the world that depend on this for their source of food and livelihood.

I'm from Maryland where watermen in the Chesapeake watershed have been crabbing for generations. The cost of fishing licences and proactive regulatory restrictions have also contributed to the sustainability of the fishery here.

As Marylander's most of us have grown up eating crabs from a young age.

When you prepare crabs you must cook them fresh, because dead crustacea release a chemical which immediately turns the meat. It also the easiest and most effective way to know you are eating safe crabs and not diseased or unhealthy crabs.

Please stop projecting your morals on to us. Militant vegetarianism is no different than religious fundamentalism. Your are projecting your morals onto the rest of us. Please stop.

Your reply is unnecessarily snarky and doesn't respond to the reasonable question in the parent comment.

If you can't safely split a lobster with your kitchen knife, you probably shouldn't be cutting carrots either. It's not hard.

I would have though chopping off the head would do it?

Have you tried to chop off a lobster’s head yourself? It’s a lot harder than you seem to think.

But the head and guts is the best part.

He isn't proposing to throw them away, just to chop it, near-instant death.

I don't think many people are "getting joy" from boiling a lobster. Even amongst those who do, I would guess that it's often out of morbid curiosity rather than from inflicting pain.

"Being indifferent to inflicting pain" is hardly different to getting joy from it.

After all humans who are indifferent to inflicting pain are considered just as psychotic as those who get joy from it :-/