First published January 18, 2022.
Yes: under UK law, octopuses, squid, cuttlefish, crabs, lobsters, crayfish and shrimps now count as sentient animals. The government announced the change on 19 November 2021, when it widened the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Bill beyond animals with a backbone. The bill became the Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022 on 28 April 2022, and its definition of "animal" names every cephalopod mollusc and every decapod crustacean alongside the vertebrates.
What the law does not do is just as important. It does not ban boiling lobsters, close any fishery or change what restaurants can serve. It creates a way for experts to check whether ministers take animal feelings into account when they make policy. Below we explain where the decision came from, what the science actually says, and what has and has not changed since.
Why the UK needed a sentience law at all
While Britain was in the European Union, animal sentience was recognised through Article 13 of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union, which told governments to pay full regard to animal welfare when shaping policy. Brexit removed that duty from UK law. In November 2017 an attempt to copy Article 13 into the EU (Withdrawal) Bill was voted down, which caused an outcry among welfare groups.
The government's answer was a stand-alone bill, introduced in the House of Lords in May 2021. In its first form it covered only vertebrates: mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians and fish. Critics pointed out that this left out animals that many scientists already suspected could suffer, and ministers commissioned an independent review to settle the question for two groups in particular.
What the LSE review examined
The review was carried out by a team at the London School of Economics and Political Science led by philosopher Jonathan Birch, with Charlotte Burn, Alexandra Schnell, Heather Browning and Andrew Crump. Published in November 2021, it drew on more than 300 scientific publications.
Rather than asking a single yes-or-no question, the authors set out eight criteria and graded how confident they were that each animal group met them:
- having nociceptors, the receptors that detect harmful stimuli;
- having brain regions that integrate information;
- having nerve pathways linking those receptors to the brain;
- responses that change when the animal is given anaesthetics or painkillers;
- weighing threats against rewards when making choices;
- flexible protective behaviour after an injury, such as guarding a wound;
- associative learning that goes beyond simple habituation;
- showing that it values painkillers or anaesthetics when injured.
The authors stressed that no single criterion settles the matter. A creature could have pain receptors and still lack any inner experience. The case for sentience rests on how many criteria are met and how well studied each one is.
How each group scored
Octopuses came out strongest, with very strong evidence across nearly all eight criteria. True crabs also showed strong evidence. Squid, cuttlefish, hermit crabs and their relatives, lobsters and crayfish showed substantial evidence. For shrimps the picture was thinner, mainly because they have been studied far less. The report made the point that low confidence usually reflects a lack of research, not proof that an animal feels nothing.
On that basis the reviewers concluded the time had come to name these animals explicitly in UK welfare law. Animal Welfare Minister Lord Zac Goldsmith put it simply when announcing the change: "The science is now clear that decapods and cephalopods can feel pain."
What the Act actually does
The Act is short, just six sections. Its core is the Animal Sentience Committee, a panel of experts appointed by the Secretary of State. The committee can publish reports on whether the government has paid due regard to the ways a policy might harm the welfare of animals as sentient beings, and it can make recommendations.
When a report comes out, the government must lay a written response before Parliament within three months. That is the main lever: ministers cannot ignore the committee, but they are not forced to follow it. The Act also has limits written into it. The committee must respect rules and customs relating to religious rites, cultural traditions and regional heritage, and it does not cover policy areas handled by the devolved governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The main sections came into force on 22 May 2023. The law also lets ministers add further invertebrates later by regulations, which both Houses of Parliament would have to approve.
Common myths about the decision
"It is now illegal to boil a lobster." Not so. The government's announcement said plainly that existing laws and industry practices, including fishing, were not affected, and that shellfish catching and the restaurant trade would see no direct impact. The LSE team did recommend banning live boiling where a more humane method exists, unless the animal is first stunned electrically, but that was advice to ministers, not part of the Act.
"The law gives octopuses rights." It does not create rights for any animal. It is a duty on government to consider welfare when making policy, policed through reports and parliamentary answers.
"This came out of nowhere." Scientists had debated invertebrate pain for years, and several countries already protected some of these animals. In Britain, octopuses used in scientific research have been covered by the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act since 2013, following a 2010 EU directive on research animals. The 2021 decision brought general policy into line with what researchers were already required to consider.
What the review recommended for food and trade
Although the Act itself does not regulate kitchens or markets, the LSE report did look closely at how these animals are handled. Its main suggestions were:
- Boiling alive: stop it where a more humane option is available, unless the animal is stunned first. Slowly heating the water was included in the same advice.
- Declawing crabs: the authors were highly confident it causes suffering and suggested restoring a UK ban that applied from 1986 to 2000.
- Live sale: stop selling live decapods to untrained, non-expert buyers, who are more likely to store and kill them badly.
- Eyestalk ablation: a practice used on farmed shrimp in many countries. The reviewers thought it was probably not done in UK hatcheries, so a ban would be a precaution rather than an immediate improvement.
Whether any of these become rules depends on future decisions by ministers, now made with the knowledge that a standing committee can ask how welfare was weighed.
What it means for you
If you cook shellfish at home, nothing in the law forces you to change. If you want to follow the science anyway, the review's findings point in a clear direction: avoid keeping live crabs and lobsters for long periods, ask your fishmonger whether they stun animals, and buy from suppliers who can explain how animals are killed. Electrical stunning devices designed for crustaceans are now sold commercially.
The broader lesson is about how evidence feeds into law. Sentience is hard to measure in animals so different from us, and the LSE team handled that uncertainty openly, saying where the research was thin. The result is a law that takes octopus and crab suffering seriously as a matter of policy, while leaving most practical changes for another day.
Sources: GOV.UK, Lobsters, octopus and crabs recognised as sentient beings (19 November 2021); legislation.gov.uk, Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022; Birch et al., Review of the Evidence of Sentience in Cephalopod Molluscs and Decapod Crustaceans (LSE, 2021); Wikipedia, Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act 2022; Futurism, original report (23 November 2021).
COMMENTS