The United Kingdom has confirmed what everyone who cried during "My Octopus Teacher" already knew.
According to a press release from the UK Department for Environment, the country is adding an amendment to its Animal Welfare Sentience Bill to recognize creatures such as octopus, crabs, squids, and lobsters as sentient creatures. The bill aims to make sure animal sentience is taken into account when developing government policy, and as such could inform debates around animal rights and diet choices.
The Minister of Animal Welfare said that it was only right that decapods and cephalopods were covered by this piece of legislation.
Both comfort and joy.
The report from the London School of Economics and Political Science found that these creatures are capable of feeling pain, pleasure, hunger, thirst, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement.
According to the release, the creatures have a complex central nervous systems.
The time has come for the UK animal welfare law to include crustaceans in an explicit way, and to take steps to regulate practices that are a source of reasonable and widespread animal welfare concerns.
The release stressed that no existing marine industry operations or practices will be impacted by the law, as it only influences future government decisions. It is good to see that a major world government is taking concrete steps to finally recognize the sentience of the creatures, and how they might not appreciate being boiled alive for their delicious meat.
The UK Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has recognised crustaceans as sentient beings.
Scientists say that the octopuses love to fling objects at each other.
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