Which method of killing the lobster would cause the least pain and distress?
The most common way of killing a lobster is to put it into boiling water, however we can read on Wikipedia page that it is one of the methods which cause pain and distress.
The killing methods most likely to cause pain and distress are:
Placing crustaceans directly into boiling water
Placing crustaceans in slowly heated water to the boiling point
Placing marine crustaceans in fresh water
...
Secondly, we can read here about the following study:
Dan Ward, then a grad student at the University of New Hampshire, once hooked an electrode up to a Lobster heart for me and boiled it. The heart beat for 1 minute 53 seconds.
So the question is, what is the most humane way to kill a lobster?
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I know Mom loves lobster and she swears by Steaming lobster. It was also the preferred method when I worked at a very popular Restaurant Chain.
Mom would start with warm water in the bottom of a pot. Then she put the lobster in on a rack to hold it clear of the water. Then she increased the heat, Pot uncovered, and timed it for something like 10 minutes after water came to a boil (putting the lid on the pot). She claimed the slower rise in heat knocked it out. All I know is the the lobster usually stopped moving when the first bubble formed and it never thrashed violently.
I can't be sure when exactly it died and whether it felt pain, but it seemed way better than just dropping it in boiling water.
Martha Stewart once demonstrated a method of placing vodka in the water, and then putting the lobsters in. I guess they got drunk and then were pleasantly anesthetized when they died!
I do not know objectively if this 'causes the least pain and distress', but just putting the point of the knife through the back skull and cutting down the front is fast.
Demonstrated in e.g. this YouTube video
Put the lobster in the freezer for about 30 minutes, it will basically be in a sleeping/coma state when you take it out. Then cut into its head lengthwise to destroy its brain before it wakes up.
Some people say that killing the lobster in a less stressful way gives the meat a better texture/flavor. But personally I have not been able to tell any difference.
EDIT: Another solution, though not a clean or popular method for lobster; If you destroy its brain faster than the speed pain travels through nerves, it would be dead before the pain reaches the brain. Could be accomplished by shooting it in the brain with a gun... a common method used to humanely kill many things.
I've not tried it personally, but I've heard good things about using clove oil to anesthetize the lobster (incidentally, the same link that the second quote in the question is pulled from).
The above link details a series of experiments done by Dave Arnold and Nils Noren on 7 different methods of killing lobsters, including the freezing mentioned by Netduke's answer. The article concludes that (when it comes to flavor at least)
Anesthesia [is] (still the best)
I can't speak to the objective difference in humaneness of killing method between this and something like freezing, but I suspect that isn't a question that's answerable.
Less of a practical suggestion but suffocation with a noble gas would not hurt a human and is being considered as a way to kill livestock. For a lobster this should work the same.
vimeo.com/83750163 video shows around the 30mins the effects on a human and 40mins for use in farms.
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