People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has sent a letter to the Rockland seafood festival asking that it be renamed “The Red Death Festival.”
The animal-rights group’s efforts to spare the lives of thousands of lobsters comes a year after it filed an unsuccessful lawsuit to stop the festival, which claims “The World’s Largest Lobster Cooker.”
The five-day festival begins Wednesday, when PETA says it will stage a woman body-painted as a lobster lying across a giant dish, next to a lemon wedge and butter, reading, “Try to Relate to Who’s on Your Plate.”
“The display will urge attendees to skip the carnage inside the festival and instead of taking a life for a fleeting taste, go vegan,” PETA said Monday.
Lobsters, according to PETA, “have complex nervous systems and feel intense pain when dismembered or boiled alive.”
PETA sued the festival and the city of Rockland a year ago attempting to stop the event from steaming thousands of live lobsters.
A state judge dismissed the lawsuit, ruling that the activity did not legally qualify as a public nuisance.
