Steerpike Steerpike

Could crabs be next on the menu for a Defra ban?

Hugh Hastings/Getty Images

It has been a difficult 2021 for the British shellfish industry. Since the end of the Brexit transition period, fishermen have had to contend with new rules which mean that live mussels, cockles, oysters and other shellfish caught in most of the UK’s waters are no longer allowed to enter the EU. Legal action against the government has been mooted, with environment secretary George Eustice accused of misleading the industry over its post-Brexit arrangements.

Given this context and the fact many fishermen live in Tory coastal seats, you might have thought the department for environment, food and rural affairs (Defra) would be doing all it can to reassure the industry. So Mr S was intrigued to spot an answer given in the Lords this week by Eustice’s colleague Zac Goldsmith, a longtime environmentalist like his friend and former employee Carrie Johnson. 

Now ensconced in ermine, the Defra minister responded to a question by his Labour shadow Baroness Hayman on the animal sentience bill which returns to the Lords on Wednesday. The bill will recognise vertebrate animals as sentient beings in domestic law and acknowledge they can suffer pain. However Goldsmith hinted that the proposed legislation could eventually extend to cover crustaceans too, noting that the Bill gives the environment secretary ‘a power to extend the recognition of sentience’:

There is clear evidence that animals with a backbone (vertebrates) are sentient and this is reflected in the Government’s Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill introduced to the House of Lords on 13 May 2021. However, the Bill also gives the Secretary of State a power to extend the recognition of sentience to particular invertebrates in future on the basis of evidence. Defra has commissioned an independent review of the available scientific evidence on sentience in decapod crustaceans such as crabs and lobsters, as well as sentience in the class, Cephalopoda, which includes octopus, cuttlefish and squid.

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