Seafood Dispatch

If this month's gruesome Humane Society videos of sick cows being led to the slaughter have you looking for a more compassionate way to be a flesh eater, here's one idea to suggest to your fishmonger: The Crustastun, which was on display at this week's Boston Seafood Show, is an electronic stunning system that knocks crabs, lobsters and crayfish unconscious in less than half a second and kills them in five seconds -- far less than the five minutes it takes to kill a large shellfish when it is thrown into a pot of boiling water.

The inventor is Simon Buckhaven, an English barrister. He conceived the idea 10 years ago when buying a lobster in a French seafood store. His device is designed to anticipate new European regulations that might outlaw inhumane treatment of animals.

Whole Foods Market, which banned the sale of live lobsters in all of its stores in June 2006, uses the machine in its Portland, Maine, location. (Lobster-obsessed Downeasters are an exception to the live-lobster rule.) And Buckhaven says the machine, which is about 20 by 20 inches and will retail for about $5,000, is a good choice for restaurants and fishmongers.

Others remain skeptical. "Killing a lobster yourself is one of the last reminders in our modern lives of the personal connection we all have to the animals we eat," says Trevor Corson, author of "The Secret Life of Lobsters." "If we hand that moment over to the Crustastun, what we're really doing gets whitewashed." Corson prefers to use the old-fashioned, low-tech lobster-killing method: a sharp knife through the front of the lobster's thorax before boiling.

-- Jane Black