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Judges accepted a
complaint by an animal rights group against the owner of a
restaurant near Florence who kept live crustaceans on ice,
ordering him to pay a 2,000 euro fine ($5,593) and a further
3,000 euros in legal fees.
Upholding a sentence by a lower court, the Cassation court ruled
that the fact that lobsters are usually cooked while still alive
does not mean they can be mistreated beforehand.
"While the particular method of cooking can be considered legal
by recognizing that it is commonly used, the suffering caused by
detaining the animals while they wait to be cooked cannot be
justified in that way," the judges wrote.
Rather than keeping lobsters and other crustaceans refrigerated,
the court said it was already common practice in high-level
restaurants and even supermarkets to keep them in oxygenated
water tanks at room temperature.
($1 = 0.8939 euros)
(Reporting by Isla Binnie. Editing by Jane Merriman)
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