Italy has some of the toughest
animal protection laws in the world. Turin, the site of this year's
winter Olympic games, actually has a law that imposes a fine if you
fail to walk your dog three times a day. Given this, it's not all
that surprising to hear that they are regarding lobsters with the
same feelings most reserve for cats and dogs.
A restaurant in Vicenza, Italy, was fined $855 for attempting to subject a lobster to a prolonged death, though the restaurant owners had no direct intention of killing the creature. They were displaying the live lobster on ice as a promotion for their seafood business. The case was first brought to the Italian courts in 2002 when a former environmental activist took his two small children to the restaurant, where they were "shocked by the display."
Lobsters can live out of water for at least 24 hours and up to several days. They have a specialized gill that allows them to utilize oxygen from the air and, as the restaurant would have returned the lobster to its tank at the end of the day, the lobster would most likely have been unharmed by the ordeal.
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