Eye-Catching Ad Urges People to Keep Lobsters and All Other Animals off Their Plates
For Immediate Release:
September 9, 2019
Contact:
Megan Wiltsie 202-483-7382
Detroit – Ahead of The Great American Lobster Fest, PETA has placed a billboard near the location of the event featuring a lobster declaring, “I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan.”
“Just like humans, lobsters can feel pain and fear, have unique personalities, and value their own lives,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA’s billboard encourages people to avoid cruel events that celebrate the slaughter of animals and to show animals kindness simply by choosing vegan meals.”
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat”—notes that lobsters are intelligent individuals who explore their surroundings, can remember other individual lobsters, and use complex signals to establish social relationships. If left alone, they can live to be more than 100 years old. A PETA investigation of a crustacean slaughterhouse revealed that live lobsters were impaled, torn apart, and decapitated—even as their legs continued to move. Chefs typically place live lobsters into pots of boiling water while they’re still conscious—a practice so cruel that it was recently banned in Switzerland.
PETA—which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—offers a free vegan starter kit (available here) full of recipes, tips, and more. For more information, please visit PETA.org.
The billboard is located at 1334 E. Jefferson Ave. (near the intersection with Rivard Street), just 0.7 miles from where The Great American Lobster Fest will be held.
