Mercy cooking: Lobsters unlikely to feel pain

　　A new study out of Norway concludes that it's unlikely lobsters feel pain, stirring up a long-simmering debate over whether Maine's most valuable seafood suffers when it's being cooked.

　　Animal activists for years have claimed that lobsters feel excruciating agony when they are cooked, and that dropping one in a pot of boiling water is tantamount to torture.

　　The study, which was funded by the Norwegian government and written by a scientist at the University of Oslo, suggests that lobsters and other invertebrates probably don't suffer even if lobsters do tend to thrash in boiling water.

　　"Lobsters and crabs have some capacity of learning, but it is unlikely that they can feel pain," the study concluded.

　　The 39-page report was aimed at determining if invertebrates should be subject to animal welfare legislation as Norway revises its animal welfare law. The report looked at invertebrate groups such as insects, crustaceans, worms and mollusks and summarized the scientific literature dealing with feelings and pain among those creatures without backbones.

　　It concluded that most invertebrates — including lobsters, crabs, worms, snails, slugs and clams — probably don't have the capacity to feel pain.

　　Lobster biologists in Maine have maintained for years that the lobster's primitive nervous system and underdeveloped brain are similar to that of an insect. While lobsters react to different stimuli, such as boiling water, the reactions are escape mechanisms, not a conscious response or an indication of pain, they say.

　　The Norwegian report backs up a study in the early 1990s at the University of Maine and reinforces what people in the lobster industry have always contended, said Bob Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute, a research and education organization in Orono.