When thinking about the kinds of animals that are legally protected, arachnids probably aren’t the first that come to mind—let alone horseshoe crabs, the giant prehistoric animal that now resides in the Atlantic Ocean along the North American coastline. (Despite their name, they’re more closely related to scorpions than to actual crabs). But like mice and monkeys, horseshoe crabs are used in—and have a complicated relationship with—the medical field.
Perhaps the most interesting and important part of the horseshoe crab (for humans, anyway) is its stunningly bright blue blood. It contains immune cells that are highly sensitive and will cause clotting when exposed to toxic bacteria. Since the 1970s, horseshoe crab blood has been used to test new vaccines for contamination, keeping countless people safe from dangerous, even deadly, infections.
But an NPR report last month found that many of the legal protections and industry best practices in place for horseshoe crabs are blatantly defied and weakly enforced. It’s becoming an issue not just for the crabs themselves, but for species that rely on them too.
The American red knot is a species of bird that’s considered to be threatened, and horseshoe crabs are a key factor for their survival. Red knots feed exclusively on horseshoe crab eggs during their summer migration from South America to the Arctic, so threats to horseshoe crabs are a direct threat to the knots as well. The red knot population now is only a fraction of what it was in the late 1980s.
And then there are animal welfare concerns. The way we get their blood isn’t pretty, and likely causes the horseshoe crabs to suffer. Per NPR, “lab technicians pierce the crabs through their hearts and drain them alive, sometimes for eight minutes, which can deplete them of more than half their volume of blue blood,” before they’re returned to the ocean, ostensibly alive.
Industry guidelines urge fishermen not to grab the crabs by the tail when taking them out of the water because it could cause injury and prevent the crabs from being able to flip themselves over, eventually killing them. But this isn’t an enforced requirement, and, as NPR uncovered, many in the industry admit to routinely picking up crabs by the tail. Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, at least 15% of bled crabs die either in the lab or back in the ocean as a result of the handling and bleeding process. And the actual impact may be far greater. Scientific evidence shows that the crabs mate less after being bled, which could spell trouble for the long-term survival of the species.
Part of the problem is that there’s little governmental regulation, so industry is mostly left to its own devices. Technically, horseshoe crabs fall under the purview of the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission. But horseshoe crab fishing is very different in nature from other kinds of commercial fishing; unlike in the case of most other fish and marine life, horseshoe crabs aren’t being killed and eaten, they’re being returned to the ocean after having their blood harvested. In other words, the biomedical industry should be held to very different standards than wild-caught fishing operations—which have their own sustainability and welfare concerns—where the wildlife are meant to die or be killed minutes or hours after on land.
Some states don’t allow harvesting horseshoe crabs too early in the red knot’s migration season, but others have no such restrictions. And even when there are restrictions as to when and where the crabs can be harvested, it’s not uncommon for fishermen to blatantly defy those regulations and receive no penalty of any sort, as has been the case in South Carolina. And these are only the problems we know about—most companies are tight-lipped about their practices, declining to provide information to the press or environmental advocacy groups and petitioning for court documents to be redacted before their release. But despite the industry’s opaqueness, scientists are beginning to sound the alarm. Horseshoe crabs are likely to feel pain, and they’re too important to the health of their ecosystems to let their numbers continue to dwindle unchecked.
There is one saving grace, and it’s a big one. Or at least, it should be. Synthetic alternatives to horseshoe crab blood have existed for years, and are widely used outside of the U.S., including in Europe, China, and Japan. Eli Lilly is one U.S. pharmaceutical company that has been pioneering the use of the synthetic. Despite being on the market for two decades, it’s not yet recognized as a suitable alternative for blood by the U.S. Pharmacopoeia (or USP, an annually published compendium of drug information that informs U.S. regulatory agencies like the FDA), so the company had to go through some extra steps to get it approved. But as the company’s senior biologist Jay Bolden has stated, the synthetic has proven to be more cost-effective, and possibly even of higher quality, than actual horseshoe crab blood.
Until the USP accepts the synthetic as an acceptable alternative, like the European Pharmacopoeia did in 2020, other drug companies that want to make the switch will have to provide extra verification like Eli Lilly did, which presumably requires additional time, money, and red tape. By catching up to the rest of the world and taking that extra step away, the USP could incentivize companies to switch to the synthetic. A future where the pharmaceutical industry isn’t reliant on this one vulnerable animal is within reach—as soon as the USP recognizes the alternative.
Horseshoe crabs are purported to be essential to the medical field, and at the same time are a diminishing natural resource that government and industry are inflicting suffering on and failing to protect. We need action on multiple fronts: State and federal governments need to take responsibility for horseshoe crabs and the unique needs of their species. The U.S. Pharmacopoeia needs to bring the American drug industry into the 21st century by accepting the synthetic alternative as acceptable for testing the safety of drugs. And drug companies need to phase out the use of actual horseshoe crab blood in favor of the more humane, more sustainable, more affordable, and more effective synthetic. We owe it to the wildlife of the mid-Atlantic Coast to stop this unnecessary cruelty and unsustainable behavior at once.
Brian Kateman is the cofounder and president of the Reducetarian Foundation.
Recognize your brand’s excellence by applying to this year’s Brands That Matter Awards before the final deadline, June 7.
Sign up for Brands That Matter notifications here.
