Wisconsin Dells-Based Resort Chain Pulls Cruel 'Lobster Zone' Machines

PETA Letter and Member Complaints Prompt Kalahari Resorts to Remove Lobster 'Clawing' Devices

For Immediate Release:
January 21, 2010

Contact:
Kristina Addington 757-622-7382

Wisconsin Dells, Wis. -- After hearing from PETA and its supporters in the Wisconsin Dells area, Kalahari Resorts has made the compassionate decision to remove the "Lobster Zone" machines from its premises in Wisconsin and Ohio. The Lobster Zone is a large tank containing live lobsters. Visitors to the resort could pay to manipulate a mechanical claw at the top of the tank's interior and try to grab a lobster.

Animals trapped in the extremely crowded Lobster Zone machines are given no food and are sometimes injured when they're caught by the claw. When a customer drags a lobster out of the tank, the animal is killed and prepared for consumption. PETA wrote a letter last month to Kalahari Resorts citing several experts in marine biology and related sciences who have determined that lobsters feel pain much as mammals do.

"By ending the use of the Lobster Zone machines, Kalahari Resorts has provided a humane example for other companies to follow," says PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "Its decision also makes good business sense, as more and more people are choosing to patronize companies that take compassion into consideration."

According to Dr. Jaren G. Horsley, an invertebrate zoologist, lobsters have a "sophisticated nervous system" and feel "a great deal of pain" when cut or cooked alive. And because lobsters do not enter a state of shock when they are hurt, they feel every moment of their slow, painful deaths when cooked in a pot of boiling water. Dr. Nedim C. Buyukmihci, a professor of veterinary surgery, writes, "There is no question that lobsters have the ability to feel pain and suffer ... [I]t would be inappropriate to do something to lobsters that you would not consider doing to conscious dogs, cats, or humans."

PETA is sending Kalahari Resorts Chief Operating Officer Josef Haas, who made the decision to remove the machines, a thank-you card and some vegan chocolates. For more information, please visit PETA's blog.