Decapods in the Media

The past two months have seen decapods all over the media.

In June there was a flurry of news that lobsters and octopuses could feel pain and needed protection. Reports from BBC News, The Guardian, and the Metro bought decapods into the public eye.

Not long after, on the 7th July, The Times revealed that the government are planning to include decapod crustaceans in animal welfare legislation. Following this, our media spokesperson, co-founder and co-director Maisie Tomlinson went from interview to interview. There’s far too many to list them all, but amongst them were BBC Radio 2 with Jeremy Vine, BBC Radio Scotland’s Drivetime, and a second Times article. The news even went international, being covered through Europe, Canada, and South Africa.

In a Metro article, chefs were interviewed to gauge how the news was being received by industry, and the responses were overwhelmingly positive. All of the chefs questioned had already been considering decapod sentience in their work, and welcomed their inclusion in legislation. One of the chefs interviewed was Rudi Warner of Avenue St James restaurant, he said “hopefully the ban brings an end to lobsters unnecessarily suffering”. Jack Stein of the Rick Stein restaurants said “animal rights are an important issue and we want to ensure we are up to date with the science”. We couldn’t agree more.