January 28, 2026 — A lawsuit brought by animal rights activist organization PETA against the Maine Lobster Festival in Rockland, Maine, U.S.A., was dismissed on 26 January.
In the lawsuit, filed 28 July 2025, the group asked the court to declare the festival a public nuisance. Additionally, PETA claimed the festival made an “unavoidable spectacle out of cruelty to animals” and asked the judge to issue a permanent injunction prohibiting the steaming of live lobsters on public lands.
July 28, 2025 — Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has sued the Maine Lobster Festival and the City of Rockland, asking a court to declare the event a public nuisance and ban the steaming of live lobsters on public property.
Filed in Knox County Superior Court, the lawsuit claims the multi-week festivities of the Maine Lobster Festival deprives local PETA members from accessing Harbor Park “without being forced to witness extreme animal suffering as approximately 16,000 live lobsters are illegally tormented and killed at the festival each year.”
May 4, 2021 — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) and “Seaspiracy” producer Kip Andersen are calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to reverse a Trump administration executive order permitting the growth of offshore aquaculture operations and practices.
PETA and Andersen said in a letter to Biden that Executive Order 13921 on Promoting American Seafood Competitiveness and Economic Growth allows for the “the proliferation of damaging and deadly offshore fish-factory farms,” which “cause substantial suffering to the farmed fish.”
September 7, 2018 — After People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) targeted Maryland’s blue crab industry in an ad campaign last month, seafood restaurant Jimmy’s Famous Seafood is fighting back to protect its livelihood.
“It’s our livelihood and the Maryland blue crab is the bloodline of Maryland.…Tens of thousands of jobs depend on the Maryland blue crab economy on a daily basis,” John Minadakis, owner of Jimmy’s Famous Seafood in Dundalk, Maryland, told SeafoodSource.
To that end, Jimmy’s launched a scathing Twitter campaign that, in part, accuses PETA of slaughtering kittens and puppies. The restaurant also posted a billboard featuring a photo of its steamed crab with the statement: “SteaMEd crabs. Here to stay. Get Famous.”
In late August, PETA placed a billboard near Baltimore’s Inner Harbor, home to several seafood restaurants such as Phillips Seafood, McCormick & Schmick’s, and The Oceanaire Seafood Room. The billboard, which includes an image of a Maryland blue crab, states: “I’m me, not meat. See the individual. Go vegan.”
“Just like humans, crabs feel pain and fear, have unique personalities, and value their own lives,” PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman said in a statement. “PETA’s billboard aims to give Charm City residents some food for thought about sparing sensitive marine animals the agony of being boiled alive or crushed to death in fishing nets simply by going vegan.”
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
August 2, 2018 — One of the most interesting things about living in Maine is seeing all the people who come to visit us every summer.
But one group’s annual appearance is something that we don’t look forward to much – it’s the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and its annual attack on the lobster fishery.
This year, PETA has tried to make a splash by buying advertising at the Portland International Jetport, hoping to dissuade visitors from eating lobster while they’re here. It features a picture of a lobster that says: “I’m ME, not Meat! See the individual. Go Vegan.”
The question of whether lobsters see themselves as individuals separate from all other beings on the planet with a life that has a beginning and an end – in other words, whether they have consciousness – is too much to answer in this space. Let’s just say we strongly doubt it.
But as to the question of whether eating Maine lobsters can be considered ethical, we do have an opinion. It is.
The Maine lobster fishery is one of the most sustainable in the world. The men and women who bait traps have a history of self-imposed conservation measures and are governed by thoughtful regulations going back to 1879.
January 16, 2018 — Poached, grilled, or baked with brie.
Served on a roll, or in mac ‘n cheese.
Lobsters may be one of the most popular crustaceans in the culinary arts. But when it comes to killing them, there’s a long and unresolved debate about how to do it humanely, and whether that extra consideration is even necessary.
The Swiss Federal Council issued an order this week banning cooks in Switzerland from placing live lobsters into pots of boiling water — joining a few other jurisdictions that have protections for the decapod crustaceans. Switzerland’s new measure stipulates that beginning March 1, lobsters must be knocked out — either by electric shock or “mechanical destruction” of the brain — before boiling them, according to Swiss public broadcaster RTS.
The announcement reignited a long-running debate: Can lobsters even feel pain?
“They can sense their environment,” said Bob Bayer, executive director of the University of Maine’s Lobster Institute, “but they probably don’t have the ability to process pain.”
Boiling lobsters alive is already illegal in some places, including New Zealand and Reggio Emilia, a city in northern Italy, according to the animal rights group Viva.
A Swiss government spokeswoman said the law there was driven by the animal rights argument.
“There are more animal friendly methods than boiling alive, that can be applied when killing a lobster,” Eva van Beek of the Federal Office of Food Safety and Veterinary Affairs said in an email.
Read the full story at the Washington Post