cooked alive on the stove, you'd probably be horrified

and lose your appetite.

Yet this is how millions of lobsters meet their fate

in American kitchens each year.

Some people even relish choosing

which lobster's time is up at restaurants

or markets across the country.

But is a lobster really any different

from the other animals that we eat?

Why do we boil lobsters alive and why do places

even sell live lobsters?

Well, come to find out this seemingly barbaric way

of cooking lobsters could actually save your life.

Turns out, humans were boiling lobsters alive

thousands of years ago.

The first recorded case came from recipes

attributed to the famous Roman cook,

Caelius Apicius, in the first century.

American chefs later adopted the process by 1880

when they discovered that the dish looks and tastes better

when the animal is boiled alive.

It wasn't until later that we realized this also

reduces the risk of severe food poisoning.

And it's all because of these little guys.

They're a type of Vibrio bacteria and they thrive

on the decaying flesh of lobsters and other shellfish.

If a lobster dies you only have a few hours

before these bacteria show up to the party.

And once they're in, it's nearly impossible

to get rid of them.

Even cooking lobster meat won't kill all the bacteria.

So it's safer just to keep the animal alive

right up until you serve it.

If Vibrio bacteria end up in your system, it's not pretty.

You can experience abdominal cramping, nausea, vomiting,

fever, chills, and sometimes even death.

Luckily, there's a pretty good way to tell

if you've got meat that is gone bad.

Just smell it.

- I can smell the ammonia.

- Yeah, you can smell that?

And that's what that man's just eaten.

That's ammonia, that's what releases.

The body starts to decompose, it's been pulled apart,

and then decompose.

- That's what makes it bad--

- [Narrator] So boiling lobsters alive saves us

from a world of pain, but what about the lobsters?

For starters, lobsters don't scream when you boil them.

In fact, they lack lungs and don't even have

the proper biological equipment to form a scream.

What you do hear is air and steam escaping

from their shells.

In any case, we don't do this to chickens or pigs

because it's pretty obvious that they can feel pain.

For lobsters it's less clear

if their primitive nervous systems and brains

even know what pain is.

When a lobster thrashes around in the pot

does it mean it's in agony?

Or is it simply a reflex response

to the boiling water, not a conscious action?

Turns out no one really knows.

So more research is needed.

Regardless, some say this uncertainty

is exactly why we should think twice.

Lobsters we just don't know whether

they have conscious experiences or not

but there's a thing in ethics that we call

the precautionary principle.

When not knowing, we should err on the side of caution.

If there is a potential for something

to have the ability to suffer,

then we should treat that possibility very seriously.

So boiling lobsters alive is not a good idea.

- New Zealand and Switzerland certainly agree.

They've gone as far as to make it illegal

to boil lobsters alive.

Should America follow suit?

Let us know in the comments below.

(upbeat music)