Thursday, 4:30 PM
Chain to loosen limits on lobsters
By Raja Mishra, Globe Staff
Transforming the rough craft of lobstering into a gentle art, a New Hampshire outfit has persuaded Whole Foods Market to waive its ban on live lobster sales at a new store opening next week in Portland, Maine.
For Whole Foods, an upscale grocery chain promising "animal compassionate" foods, the decision marks another effort to provide its customers with the delicacy while giving the lobsters what it considers a decent demise. Whole Foods heightened a national debate last year after it first offered little condos for lobsters in holding pens so the animals would not attack each other, and then scuttled the idea and banned all live lobster sales, equating current lobster catch-and-ship techniques with torture.
But the Little Bay Lobster Co. of Newington, N.H., had developed a method to deliver the freshest, healthiest lobsters to stores -- not to please the lobsters, but to fatten its profits. The firm’s "two-touch" lobster harvesting method -- in which the animals go from boat to store with minimal contact with humans and other lobsters -- deeply impressed Whole Foods executives when they visited Little Bay.
"We did it for the bottom line. But in the end, it achieved Whole Foods’ goals," said Craig Rief, Little Bay’s president and chief executive officer.
Texas-based Whole Foods, the nation’s largest retailer of natural and organic foods, said its ban on live lobster sales will continue at its other 191 stores around North America and the United Kingdom because it considers longer journeys harmful to the lobsters’ well-being.
"Human beings are all going to die, too. But the quality of life is important while we’re alive. It is the same with animals," said David Lannon, Whole Foods’ North Atlantic regional president.
At the Portland store, which opens Wednesday, workers will use a "CrustaStun" device to instantaneously kill lobsters with 110 volts rather than steaming, which Whole Foods considers unethical because it can take several minutes for the hard-shelled animal to die. Customers will still be able to purchase live lobsters and kill them at home.
Lobsters that have been at the store for seven days -- tracked by color-coded claw bands -- will be zapped and end up in the deli as lobster salad or other delicacies. Store officials said one week, even in separate compartments in the store’s pen, is long enough.
