Tag: Lobsters

PETA Activists Protest at Sea Food Store — But Some Folks Mistake It for Store Promotion

A couple People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals’ activists protested outside a seafood restaurant in Bar Harbor, Maine, but some passersby thought the protest was actually a restaurant promotion.

PETA’s Karin Robertson and Kelsey Gibb demonstrated across the street from the Parkside Restaurant, which features six or seven lobster dishes according to its manager, James Costello.

Gibb dressed up in a lobster costume, while Robertson handed out fliers. But some folks were confused about the protest. One passerby, Jeff Brent, told The Bangor Daily News,

It’s a little over the top. I thought it was an advertisement for the lobster house across the street.

Brent added that the protest would have made a bit more sense if the lobster had been standing in a pot.

Robertson told the newspaper she was satisfied with the response,

I think we’ve had a good response from people. Most people wouldn’t consider boiling any other animal alive. . . . Hopefully, they’ll leave them in the ocean instead of throwing them in to a pot.

Robertson and Gibb protested at a number of lobster restaurants in the northeast, but oddly enough seems to be shying away from its “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” tactics. According to Robertson, PETA decided not to protest at the Main Lobster Festival in Rockland. Robertson told the Bangor Daily News,

We’ve gone to the lobster festival in the past. We don’t really need to draw attention to a festival that promotes cruelty to animals.

PETA passing an a publicity opportunity? Please, say it ain’t so.

Source:

PETA activists protest in lobster-eating mecca. Bangor Daily News, August 10, 2005.

Animal Rights Extremists Take Credit for Cutting Fishing Nets

A group calling itself the Lobster Liberation Front took credit for the April slashing of a UK fisherman’s lobster nets.

The Southern Animal Rights Coalition posted the following message to its website from the extremists,

Avast ye!

Over the Easter Weekend, marauders from the Lobster Liberation Front took the fight to the coast once more, ensuring that the Dorset fishing industry does not forget our name.

Extensive damage was inflicted upon vast lengths of fishing nets. Our tools bit like the teeth of shark, as net after net was left shredded at our feet. To finish the effect, they were left draped across the boats.

Of course, the LLF couldn’t leave without wreaking havoc on a few unsuspecting lobster pots! The floating prisons were put out of action, never again to ensnare our marine life.

Needless to say, the scurvy dog who lurks about Kimmeridge Bay, trapping crustacean life so that they can be boiled alive and eaten, must have felt awfully sea sick when he found his equipment in the morning!

This action demonstrates that the LLF is no joke. We are here to stay, and we mean business. Those who find the cruel and merciless boiling alive of innocent life as not only acceptable, but even comical, should start looking over their shoulders.

See ye soon bilge dogs!

LLFM

The nets belong to Nick Ford, 40, who told the Press Association,

They are obviously picking on small fisherman. It’s my livelihood. I’m only a one-man band trying to muddle my way through life bringing up my two children. My job happens to be that I’m a fisherman. I don’t know what they are trying to do. They say they are trying to save the lobsters but they will do more harm than good.

Sources:

Animal rights group target lobster fisherman. Lesley Richardson, Press Association, April 19, 2005.

Lobster Liberation Front Strikes Again. Southern Animal Rights Coalition, April 4, 2005.

Wait, Wait, Don’t Make Me Laugh

In early March, Bubba the lobster briefly made the news here in the United States. Bubba weighed in at 22 pounds and may have been 100 years old, though marine biologists said 30-50 is more likely. Originally caught in the Atlantic, Bubba ended up for sale in a tank in a market.

A movement to have Bubba spared from being a scrumptious stew arose, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals got in on the act. PETA’s Karin Robertson wrote in a letter to the market,

It would be a tragedy to end his long life by tormenting him in a pot of boiling water or by shoving him into a zoo aquarium to be gawked at in a tiny enclosure until he dies.

Alas, it was finally agreed that the Pittsburgh Zoo would take custody of Bubba. And Bubba promptly died the day after arriving at the zoo, where he was still in a quarantine area of the zoo’s aquarium while zoo officials examined him to see if he was healthy enough to be transferred to the aquarium.

But the horrors that Bubba had to endure were not over; not by a long shot. It seems that someone on National Public Radio managed to find some humor in Bubba’s life and death which did not go over well with Carolina Animal Action. Someone with that group posted a message to AR-NEWS urging activists to complain to NPR,

The National Public Radio Show “Wait, WaitÂ…DonÂ’t Tell Me” today ridiculed the death of Bubba the lobster. Their website is http://www.npr.org/programs/waitwait/, e-mail address waitw…@npr.org. Info about Bubba is available at http://www.fishinghurts.com/feat-bubba.asp

Apparently someone from CAA was upset with this exchange,

Announcer: . . . he died of natural causes.

Male Voice: . . . and melted butter.

Announcer: That’s the question. My immediate reaction was: okay, the animal died, I’m sorry . . . can we eat him now?

Male Voice: I think somebody just managed to sidestep PETA’s request. Like, you know, oh we gave him a great tank, it just happened to be bubbling.

Truly tasteless. Such humor probably leads right into violence against animals and, ultimately, people.

Source:

Bubba the Leviathan Lobster Dies at Zoo. Associated Press, March 2, 2005.

Big Bubba, the lobster, saved from the pot. Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Bob Batz Jr. and Anita Srikameswaran, March 2, 2005.

Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me. March 5, 2005.

Yet Another Group Weighs In On Lobster Pain Debate

In February, a Norwegian government report jumped into the debate about whether or not lobsters are capable of feeling pain, concluding that they are not, in fact, capable of doing so.

The Norwegian government commissioned a committee led by University of Oslo professor Wenche Farstad to prepare a 39-page report on whether or not lobsters felt pain, in which case they would be subject to revised animal welfare laws in that country. The report concluded that, “Lobsters and crabs have some capacity of learning, but it is unlikely that they can feel pain.” The report concluded that more study of crustaceans is needed to resolve the debate. The report also concluded that earthworms do not feel pain when placed on a fishhook, but that some types of insects such a honeybees might deserve special care.

Not surprisingly animal rights activists weren’t happy the rather ambiguous findings of the committee. PETA’s Karin Robertson told the Associated Press that the study was biased — not at all like PETA’s purely objective reports. According to Robertson,

This is exactly like the tobacco industry claiming that smoking doesn’t cause cancer.

Robertson told the AP that there are unbiased scientists that believe lobsters feel pain. As an example, she cited a Humane Society of the United States zoologist.

Source:

Debate simmers over just what lobsters feel when made a meal. Portland Press Herald, February 15, 2005.

Unlikely lobsters feel pain in boiling water. Associated press, February 15, 2005.

Worms on a hook don’t suffer? Reuters, February 7, 2005.

Edward Furlong Arrested Freeing Lobster

Actor Edward Furlong, one of the stars of “Terminator 2,” was arrested at a Meijer grocery store in Florence, Kentucky after he and several friends remove lobsters from a tank at the store.

Managers at the store called police who arrested Furlong and arrested him on a misdemeanor charge of being intoxicated at a public place.

The 27-year-old Furlong apparently has a habit of compensating for his vegetarian diet by imbibing large amounts of alcohol. In September 2001 he was arrested for driving without a license, and then four hours later arrested again on a DUI charge after causing an accident.

Furlong was in Florence shooting a movie.

Source:

‘Terminator 2’ Actor Arrested. Associated Press, September 17, 2004.

PETA Considers Legal Action Against "Domestic Terrorist" Martha Stewart

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals announced in September that it was considering lethal action against Martha Stewart after she boiled a live lobster on her Martha Stewart Living show.

In a press release PETA said,

Martha Stewart Living should change its name to Martha Stewart Dying. On a recent show, the domestic diva (or domestic terrorist, if you happen to be an animal) removed live soft-shell crabs from their shells and fried them while they writhed around in the pan. Just a few episodes previously, Martha boiled live lobsters and commented that lobsters don’t have a central nervous system, despite marine biologists? claims to the contrary.

As Connecticut law protects all animals from mutilation and cruel killing, PETA?s lawyers are considering legal action. One cannot justify the willful and callous act of deliberately choosing to remove the shells of conscious crabs and allowing the animals to writhe in a hot pan, cooking them to death as they struggle.

Source:

PETA Considers Legal Action Against Martha Stewart on Cruelty Charges. Press Release, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, September 2003.