PETA sure has their heads up their you know what. This one will go over more poorly than a wet fart in Church...
PETA sues Maine Lobster Festival in an effort to stop steaming of 20,000 pounds of live lobster
The animal rights organization says lobsters can feel pain and that the city's decision to allow the festival to steam them live is 'a municipally endorsed spectacle of animal suffering.'

A large crowd at Rockland’s annual Maine Lobster Festival in 2011. (Carl D. Walsh/Staff Photographer)
A prominent animal rights organization has filed a lawsuit to try to stop the Maine Lobster Festival and city of Rockland from steaming more than 20,000 pounds of live lobster at future events.
In their complaint filed in Knox County Superior Court on Thursday, the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, or PETA, alleges the city and festival organizers are violating Maine’s animal protection statutes on public land. The organization’s argument hinges on evolving science that shows lobsters feel pain, despite popular belief that lobsters are not sentient creatures.
And PETA asserts that by conducting this “municipally sanctioned,” “criminal animal cruelty” on public land, the city is infringing on the rights of PETA’s 3,500 members who live within 20 miles of Rockland.
The organization is calling on the courts to stop the Maine Lobster Festival from using what festival organizers deem “The World’s Largest Lobster Cooker,” a giant lobster pot that can cook up to 1,600 pounds of lobster in 15 minutes, a demonstration the lawsuit is labeling “a municipally endorsed spectacle of animal suffering.”
This year’s festival is scheduled to run from July 30 to Aug. 3. PETA acknowledged that it doesn’t expect the lawsuit to change things this year.
“But our hope would be that, because of this case, this will be the last Maine Lobster Festival in which lobsters are tortured to death,” Asher Smith, PETA’s director of litigation, said in an interview.
The Rockland Festival Corporation, which organizes the event, said it respects different viewpoints and “takes any public concern seriously,” but follows the scientific evidence that their cooking method does not cause pain.
“The Maine Lobster Festival has celebrated Maine’s iconic lobster industry for 78 years using traditional, lawful, and widely accepted cooking methods,” said Shannon Kinney, the marketing director for the Maine Lobster Festival and Rockland Festival Corporation.
The city of Rockland did not respond to requests for comment Thursday.
A BIOLOGICAL DEBATE
This isn’t PETA’s first time launching a campaign targeting the Maine Lobster Festival —
nor its first time targeting Maine’s iconic industry.
In 2021,
PETA sponsored advertisements at the Portland International Jetport encouraging passengers to forgo eating lobsters entirely. On a poster, a lobster held up a sign reading “I’m ME, Not Meat.” They bought the ad space just as the annual Maine Lobster Festival was getting underway.
PETA’s argument hinges on a highly debated belief: that lobsters can feel pain.
The science is evolving, and there’s no consensus among lobster biologists about whether that’s true. Rick Wahle, a leading lobster biologist in Maine, described it as a “controversial” question.
“My take is that, to date, the measure of whether lobsters perceive a stimulus to be noxious is whether they move away, avoid it, or (are) grooming an injured part of the body,” Wahle said in an email. “Actual pain receptors have yet to be found.”
Science has long posited that lobsters don’t have the nerve endings or receptors to sense pain, according to Jason Goldstein, a researcher at the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve.
But even in studies that reference these findings, Goldstein said, “unfortunately, little work has been conducted on the topic in lobsters specifically.”
In November 2021, a study from the London School of Economics and Political Science zoomed in on this debate. Its findings indicated researchers had “either high or very high confidence” that decapod crustaceans — like lobsters, crabs and crayfish — do feel pain based on their brain chemistry and their responses to threat.
If scientific findings like the one from the London School of Economics gain traction, then the festival — or any person boiling lobsters alive in Maine — could be violating the state’s animal cruelty statutes. Those statutes say that any sentient animal must be killed with an “instantaneous death.”
The Rockland Festival Corporation disagrees.
“To date, Maine’s laws do not prohibit the traditional preparation of lobster, and the state has not recognized boiling or steaming lobsters as a violation of its animal welfare laws,” Kinney, the corporation’s marketing director, said.
Electrical-shock stunning devices are becoming an increasingly popular alternative to boiling or steaming live lobsters. The devices deliver a shock, and then the lobsters are boiled right after.
It’s one method that’s catching attention in Europe. And Wahle, Maine’s leading lobster biologist, said that some lobster processors in the state are also using those systems, including Ready Seafood, Maine’s largest lobster processor, in Saco.
STEAM NO MORE
PETA acknowledges that its lawsuit is a tall order.
“The absolute bare minimum is that the death of these animals has to be instantaneous,” Smith, PETA’s litigation director said. “Obviously, PETA’s own view is anyone who doesn’t want to support animal suffering can make the easy choice to go vegan. But the Maine Lobster Festival has its own obligation to follow the law.”
Smith also said the live cooking limits its members’ enjoyment of the city park.
“PETA hears from its members who want to use the park for walking their dogs, enjoying the green space, but effectively can’t because they would be exposed to these horrific displays of torture,” Smith said.
Kinney said this hasn’t come across the festival corporation’s radar before.
PETA is hoping to set a precedent for similar events.
“When PETA wins this case, it should, just by its very nature, become an example that public prosecutors and others can use to establish that non-instantaneous killing, that torture of lobsters, violates the law no matter who does it,” Smith said.