Flying Banner Urges Lobster Festgoers: ‘Keep Your Paws off Their Claws!’
Message Comes After Appeal by Fred Schneider, PETA Investigation Revealing Lobsters Dismembered Alive at Maine Slaughterhouse
For Immediate Release:
July 29, 2014
Contact:
Alexis Sadoti 202-483-7382
When attendees arrive for the first day of the Maine Lobster Festival on Wednesday, they’ll be in for a surprise, courtesy of PETA, which has arranged for a plane to fly over the event with a banner that proclaims, “Keep Your Paws off Their Claws! Try Vegan.”
Where: The plane will circle the festival on the harbor for 15 minutes at intervals of 15 minutes—call pilot Harry Nikitas at 978-502-7350 for the plane’s current whereabouts.
When: Wednesday, July 30, 12:15–2:30 p.m.
PETA, whose motto says, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat,” hopes to remind festivalgoers that lobsters feel pain and fear yet are killed in gruesome ways to be turned into “seafood.” PETA’s recent investigation of Linda Bean’s Maine Lobster’s slaughterhouse revealed that live lobsters were impaled, torn apart, and decapitated—even as their legs continued to move frantically.
“[Twenty] million of these sensitive animals, who carry their young for 9 months, take long-distance trips and hold claws with their young, are still slaughtered for our plates every year in the U.S. alone,” wrote B-52s singer Fred Schneider in an op-edprinted on the front page of the Portland Press Herald (available here) last week in advance of the fest. This year is the 35th anniversary of the B-52s’ hit single “Rock Lobster,” and Schneider urges everyone to let lobsters “rock on” by steering clear of lobster festivals.
For more information, please visit PETA.org.
