A well-known Milanese restauranteur and his wife have been been sent to trial for the mistreatment of lobsters and will find themselves before a judge in early March.
The alleged crime took place in November of 2007 when health inspectors found that live lobsters were on display for potential customers on packs of crushed ice and not inside a water tank.
According to the prosecutor in the case, Giulio Benedetti, not only did this constitute a violation of food preservation laws, but the couple were also guilty of mistreating the lobsters and causing them ''insupportable physical pain'' by keeping them alive out of their natural habitat, water.
The prosecution also suspects that this treatment may have been a contributing factor in the lobsters' death.
The case is similar an April 2006 one in Vicenza when a restaurant operator was fined 688 euros for mistreating lobsters by keeping them on ice.
The fine was the result of a complaint filed in March 2002 by a former activist from Italy's animal protection agency ENPA.
According to the restauranteur, at the time of his alleged 'crime' there were no specific guidelines on maintaining live lobsters, regulations which entered the law books only in 2004.
The general opinion of lobstermen is that a hard shell lobster can survive out of the water for 24 hours or more, while soft shell lobsters, those which are regrowing their shells after shedding in the summer, are best kept in water.
They also maintain that lobsters, sometimes referred to as the 'cockroaches of the sea', do not suffer in the traditional sense, even when they are thrown into boiling water for cooking.
Most lobsters in Italy are hard shells and arrive from northern Europe and North America packed in ice.
The local press in Vicenza noted at the time that the case had given the restaurant operator some excellent and free publicity.
