According to an article in Saturday's New York Times (In Test Program, Whole Foods Becomes a Lobster's New Best Friend), the Whole Foods grocery chain is beginning a program that will make a lobster's "trip from sea to sale more humane." If, at the end of the trial run, Whole Foods' decides that the lobsters' quality of life is not improved, they will stop selling the crustaceans all together.
Critics of the plan, mainly from the seafood industry, claim it is just a poor excuse for bad sales.
It is true that most people like to order their lobster from a restaurant, rather than try to cook it for themselves at home. That said, when and if I do cook a lobster, I would definitely buy it from a fishmonger, rather than a grocery chain.
Whole Foods has proven to be a friend of the animals by selling cage-free eggs, boycotting Canadian seafood to save Canadas seals, and now by no longer selling lobsters. The claim made by the seafood sellers that lobsters do not feel pain is ludicrous. Because lobsters have complex nervous systems and can sense actions that will cause them harm, it is only logical that they can feel pain. When they are put into a pot of boiling water, they try desperately to escape by whipping their bodies around and clawing at the sides of the pan.