Ban Live-Animal Eating

Imagine being pulled from a tank, flung onto a table, and pinned down as your arms and legs are cut off. At restaurants across the country, octopuses—after suffering a harrowing shipment halfway around the world—are hacked apart and served as a Korean dish called "sannakji" (literally, "wriggling octopus").

Over a dozen restaurants in California and New York mutilate and serve live octopuses and other animals like shrimp and lobster.

When it comes to experiencing pain, Dr. Mather explains that octopuses "can anticipate a painful, difficult, stressful situation—they can remember it. There is absolutely no doubt that they feel pain." Shrimps, lobsters, and other crustaceans fulfill all of the "criteria" of pain sensation, including having a developed nervous system and exhibiting behaviors like wound-guarding and heightened protectiveness—just as a dog, pig, or primate would do. And according to invertebrate zoologist Dr. Jaren G. Horsley, "[A] lobster is in a great deal of pain from being cut open … [and] feels all the pain until its nervous system is destroyed."

You can help stop these animals from experiencing pain. Please sign the petition calling on lawmakers to introduce legislation that prohibits animals from being mutilated, "prepared," and served alive.