SYDNEY, Australia – Plunging live lobsters into pots of boiling water to kill them will become a thing of the past in Australia if animal welfare activists get their way.

The nation’s Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals is calling for lobsters to be lulled to sleep in a refrigerator or freezer and then killed by splitting or driving a spike through them.

“If you chuck a live crustacean into a boiling pot of water, they feel that and you are killing them cruelly,” RSPCA President Hugh Wirth said Wednesday. “While there are still traditionalists, I think this will get rid of the last resistance. I am sure now we will get an uptake of the proper methodology.”