Couple face lobster cruelty charge

Published on Tuesday 6 January 2009 13:46

A RESTAURANT boss and his wife are to go on trial accused of mistreating lobsters in their upmarket Italian restaurant, it emerged today.

The couple, who have not been named, were charged after health inspectors found that live lobsters were on display for potential customers on packs of crushed ice and not inside a water tank.

According to the prosecutor in the case, Giulio Benedetti, not only did this constitute a violation of food preservation laws, but the couple were also guilty of mistreating the lobsters and causing them ''insupportable physical pain'' by keeping them alive out of their natural habitat, water.

The case, which centres on a Milan restaurant, is due to be heard in early March but as today was a public holiday in Italy no further details were available.

The prosecution also suspects that the mistreatment may have been a contributing factor in the lobsters' death. The case is similar an April 2006 one in Vicenza when a restaurant operator was fined 631 for mistreating lobsters by keeping them on ice.

Cookery guidelines are that a hard shell lobster can survive out of the water for 24 hours or more,while soft shell lobsters, those which are regrowing their shells after shedding in the summer, are best kept in water.

They also maintain that lobsters, sometimes referred to as the 'cockroaches of the sea', do not suffer in the traditional sense, even when they are thrown into boiling water for cooking.

Most lobsters in Italy are hard shells and arrive from northern Europe and North America packed in ice.