Animal rights organisation has launched a national campaign urging consumers to give up lobster over the festive season.
Lobster is a staple of end-of-year celebrations in Belgium, alongside foie gras and oysters, and the country is among the biggest consumers per inhabitant.
Around 7.4 million lobsters are imported annually, more than 4 million of them alive, to meet demand.
Yet behind this popularity lie practices little known to the public, Gaia said on Tuesday, denouncing what it describes as serious, lasting and avoidable suffering from capture to cooking.
For two weeks, it will run an advert featuring a dog called Bonhomard (good lobster), confident until he finds himself hanging over a boiling pot. The clip will air on television, in cinemas and online.
According to Gaia, mistreatment begins at capture. Lobsters caught in Canada in spring can be kept alive for up to nine months in holding tanks.
They are then transported vertically in crates, with claws tied, before being stored in overcrowded tanks in Belgium, often without food or shelter. When tanks are not available, they are placed alive on ice, causing a slow death.
Conditions worsen in the kitchen, Gaia says, where lobsters are often boiled alive or cut without prior stunning, even though they may remain conscious for about a minute, or two to three minutes for larger individuals.
"We now know these animals feel pain, which is scientifically established. The only logical step is to stop inflicting this suffering," said Sébastien de Jonge, Gaia's director of operations.
A 2024 study by Lynne Sneddon of the University of Gothenburg indicates that a lobster plunged into boiling water may remain conscious for several minutes and feel intense pain, the organisation added. The 2024 New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness also supports this conclusion.
Gaia notes that Carrefour, Delhaize and Intermarché are the last chains still selling live lobsters and urges them to end the practice.
Politically, it is calling for a ban on killing without stunning, mandatory use of devices such as the crustastun, which stuns crustaceans in a fraction of a second, and a prohibition on selling live lobsters.
In total volume, Belgium ranks fifth worldwide for lobster consumption, behind the United States, China, Japan and France. It sources mainly from Canada, as well as the Netherlands and France.
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