I live in northern Europe - we get our LR through shipping with no water - shipping time around 48 hours. But the cruelty is not as serve as it sounds like. Most of these animals can breathe through gills or body if the only are wet or damp. The thin water layers with a huge area will make oxygen diffuse into the animal during the whole transport – therefor they are often wrapped with wet pages from newspapers. I have open a lot of these boxes and no dead animals at all (48 H transport) – only a few have smell death - but there is a possibility (and reality sometimes) that things goes wrong.
However – I would normally not put these stones in tanks with no functional nitrification cycle. I can put this in tanks that I start with my method because I know that the nitrification cycle will slowly have been started after 1 – 2 week when dead organic at theses rocks will start to rotten - there is my personal limit