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You can no longer boil a lobster alive in Switzerland, unless you stun it first:
The Swiss government has ordered an end to the common culinary practice of throwing lobsters into boiling water while they are still alive, ruling that they must be knocked out before they are killed.
As part of a wider overhaul of Swiss animal protection laws, Bern said that as of 1 March, "the practice of plunging live lobsters into boiling water, which is common in restaurants, is no longer permitted". Lobsters "will now have to be stunned before they are put to death," the government order read.
According to Swiss public broadcaster RTS, only electric shock or the "mechanical destruction" of the lobster's brain will be accepted methods of stunning the animals once the new rule takes affect.
Also at BBC.
(Score: 2) by Wootery on Monday January 15 2018, @10:23AM
It seems pretty clear that other species of ape must experience pain at least somewhat similarly to how we do - we're just so similar.
The difference in intelligence does indeed hint (though it's not a bullet-proof association) that their form of consciousness is probably less rich than our own, but I see little reason to entertain the idea that, say, gorillas can't suffer in a meaningful sense.
As we stray further and further from our fellow primates, the question becomes harder to answer. How about ants? Jellyfish? Those damnably delicious lobsters? There are important differences. They still respond to physical harm, and they even respond to some pain-killers used to treat humans, but they're far less intelligent.
Additionally their hardware architecture is quite different - as I understand it, lobsters have a number of independent 'ganglia', rather than one central brain. Whether that should impact our estimations of their level of consciousness and ability to suffer, isn't obvious.
(Related question: are Blade Runner's 'simulants' conscious? Are you going to tell me they can't be conscious simply because their braints are made of silicon rather than grey mush?)