Saving Seafood

Seafood industry counters PETA protest with anger, humor

August 27, 2018 — Anti-seafood advertising messages in a few U.S. and Canadian cities are gaining attention this summer – positive, negative, and humorous.

Timed before major summer seafood festivals, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA)-sponsored billboards express the individuality of crustaceans. For example, the current billboard displayed in Baltimore, Maryland, which includes an image of a Maryland blue crab, states: “I’m me, not meat. See the individual. Go vegan.”

The billboard, near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor and several seafood restaurants such as Phillips Seafood, McCormick & Schmick’s, and The Oceanaire Seafood Room, will be in place for the Baltimore Seafood Festival on 15 September.

In late July, PETA posted ads with the same message: ”I’m ME, Not MEAT. See the Individual. Go Vegan,” along with the image of a Maine lobster, on the concourse in the Portland International Jetport. The ads are near several airport restaurants, including Linda Bean’s Maine Lobster Cafe, which sells live lobsters.

A previous PETA investigation of Linda Bean’s Maine Lobster revealed that live lobsters were “impaled, torn apart, and decapitated – even as their legs continued to move,” PETA said in a statement.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

 

Linda Bean once hoped to be to lobster what Perdue is to chicken. What happened?

February 21, 2017 — Linda Lorraine Bean, the other L.L. Bean, has spent the last decade promoting her lobster empire, one that merged the cachet of her family name with the popularity of the state’s top crustacean.

But last month, she took to the national spotlight for a different reason: to defend bankrolling a political action committee supporting Donald Trump, a move that sparked a boycott of L.L. Bean, where she sits on the board. Trump later tweeted his support for L.L. Bean, even giving Linda Bean’s business a shout-out.

Yet when the L.L. Bean heiress appeared on Fox News to defend both companies and the jobs they generate, what went unsaid was that Bean has largely stepped away from the lobster business. In the last two years, she has shifted her interests, selling off her Rockland lobster distributorship to her employees, unloading a controversial lobster processing facility, and shuttering some of her lobster roll eateries.

Read the full story at the Boston Globe