Infelicitous Phrasing

 I can't help thinking this is an example of infelicitous phrasing, though I am sure others will find it very felicitous:

"Meanwhile, the UK government recently recognised that their close evolutionary cousins – crabs and lobsters – as sentient, and proposed legislation that would ban people from boiling them alive."

This is the source text:

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20211126-why-insects-are-more-sensitive-than-they-seem?utm_source=pocket-newtab-global-en-GB

In context, the sentence is more easily understood, but I still naturally -- without straining to -- misunderstood it on first reading. This example is amusing, of course, but increasingly I find this kind of slipshod prose irritating. It's like being served by a waiter who takes no care to keep his thumb from entering your soup as he places it in front of you. 

The text in question, apart from its entertaining ambiguity, also contains an unnecessary 'that' on which I stub my metaphorical toe as I read.



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