A Maine newspaper isn’t having PETA’s anti-lobster-eating campaign
“Nice try, but move along.”
The Portland Press Herald has considered the lobster, and they’re dipping it in butter anyway. The Maine newspaper’s editorial board responded Thursday to a recent ad campaign from PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) that urges travelers arriving at Portland International Jetport to abstain from eating lobster. The posters, which feature a lobster holding a sign that reads, “I’m ME, not MEAT,” were placed in the airport to coincide with the Maine Lobster Festival, running Wednesday to Sunday.On Twitter, PETA said the campaign urges people at the airport “to see lobsters as the individuals they are.”
Just in time for the #MaineLobsterFestival, PETA placed these ads in @portlandjetport to urge travelers to see lobsters as the individuals they are. #GoVegan https://t.co/TCd2aKK6sP
— PETA (@peta) August 2, 2018
The Press Herald’s response: “Nice try, but move along.”
The @PressHerald editorial board is unequivocal in its opinion of PETA’s attempt to get people to stop eating lobster: Nice try, but move along.https://t.co/baEJ10ZcR7
— Portland Press Herald (@PressHerald) August 2, 2018
PETA undertakes an annual attack on Maine’s lobster fishery, according to the newspaper, but this year’s posters at the airport were a new tactic.
A spokesperson for the organization told the Press Herald that their opposition to eating lobsters stems from the belief that the crustaceans feel pain, have their own personalities and a sense of their own mortality, and that people should feel the same revulsion cooking a lobster that they would putting a cat or dog in boiling water.
Bob Bayer, executive director of the Lobster Institute at the University of Maine, told the Press Herald that research indicates lobsters likely don’t feel pain and that they have nervous systems similar to insects.
“The question of whether lobsters see themselves as individuals separate from all other beings on the planet with a life that has a beginning and an end – in other words, whether they have consciousness – is too much to answer in this space,” the editorial board wrote on the question. “Let’s just say we strongly doubt it.”
However, eating lobsters, the Press Herald argued, is ethical, describing the lobster fishery in Maine as “one of the most sustainable in the world.”
The money from lobster sales in Maine — more than $400 million a year — gets distributed to residents of the state to help communities survive, the editorial board pointed out.
“That sounds pretty ethical, virtuous even,” they wrote. “But that’s not what PETA means with its tiresome attack on lobstering. The bottom line for the group is whether lobsters feel pain when they are dropped in a pot of boiling water… Just as with the question of whether lobsters think about their individuality, we can’t know for sure if they feel pain. But when it comes to the ethical treatment of lobsters, we think the Maine fishery makes a strong case.”
Read the full editorial at the Press Herald.
