Animal rights group PETA has filed a lawsuit against the Maine Lobster Festival, claiming the event organizers are torturing lobsters by steaming them to eat.
The lawsuit, filed July 24 in Knox County Superior Court, claims the festival and the city of Rockland, where the event is held, are acting in violation of Maine law prohibiting the torture and torment of animals, the Penobscot Bay Pilot reported.
PETA is asking the court to deem the festival a “public nuisance” and ban organizers from steaming lobsters on public land, WMTW reported.
PETA argues in the suit that the festival is “one of the most egregious violations of Maine’s animal protection statutes occurring anywhere on public land in the state: the systematic torture of approximately 16,000 live, sentient animals at the Maine Lobster Festival held annually at Harbor Park in Rockland, Maine.”
The group’s attorneys argued that PETA also filed the lawsuit on behalf of Rockland residents who lose access to walkways, public kayaking and canoeing, intertidal lands, and related civic spaces during the festival.
“These individuals cannot access public trust resources without encountering and accepting intolerable conditions: the illegal public torture and killing of thousands of individual sentient lobsters via live steaming.”
In the suit, PETA argues that because lobsters are sentient beings, they are able to feel pain, and should be protected under Maine law, which requires any method used to kill a sentient creature must cause instantaneous death. PETA argues that the lobsters remain neurologically active and can feel the pain, suffering for several minutes when they are steamed.
Meanwhile, event organizers say they’re going by the books.
An event organizer told WMTW they use “traditional, lawful and widely accepted cooking methods” when steaming lobsters, and that there is no scientific evidence the crustaceans can feel pain.
A hearing has not yet been scheduled for PETA’s request for an injunction to stop the steaming of the lobsters.
The annual event begins July 30, and runs through August 3.
