It’s official - lobsters feel no pain when plunged into a pot of boiling water.

White coated boffins in Norway, a country which takes its seafood seriously, have given the thumbs-up to the traditional cooking method.

The team from the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science in Oslo was given the job of checking out a whole range of animal welfare issues, from keeping bees to baiting a fishhook, when the Norwegian government decided to update its cruelty-to-animals laws.

Their study of levels of pain, discomfort and stress in invertebrates concluded that the nervous systems of crabs and lobsters are too primitive for them to feel any pain from being popped into the pot.

The high pitched whistle, sometimes rather gruesomely called the ‘lobster’s scream’, is actually the sound of air escaping from the shell.

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