PETA Targets Lobster Game

June 30, 2008 -

Uh, hold the surf  & turf...

Animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has protested a Colorado sports bar's arcade-like claw game in which diners attempt to snag a live lobster. As reported by Denver Daily:

[PETA] says it is cruel and unusual to keep the lobsters in the Lobster Zone tank only to be boiled alive.

 

“JD’s Lobster Zone machine turns torture and death into a game, pure and simple,” said PETA Vice President Tracy Reiman.

 

In case you’re wondering, Lobster Zone works just like any other claw game. For $2, patrons have a chance to move the remote-controlled metal claw inside the tank, place it over a live lobster, and as the machine says, “You catch ‘em, we cook ‘em.”

Bar owner Dennis McCann told the newspaper that he will remove the game, but didn't understand the uproar:

I don’t know what the difference is between my place and a King Soopers that has a lobster tank other than the way the lobsters are harvested out of the tank... Life’s too short to put my energy toward this. On the one side, I hate that someone is doing this to me. But on the other side, I’ll take the high road to make sure my customers are happy.

Meanwhile, Cosmo's Weird, Wacky, Wonderful World reports that Lobster Zone machines, made by Florida-based Apopka, are in more than 300 locations in the United States.


Comments

Re: PETA Targets Lobster Game

I'll admit I got my information on that from my ex who grew up in Maine.

As for the nail, the time it takes maybe? Or mess? From what I have been told about the cooking, as soon as the head is in the water, it's dead.

Re: PETA Targets Lobster Game

I'm not claiming that it's not true, but how do we know that they're dead the second they hit the water?  Everyone says it, but I've never seen actual proof.  Did somebody drop a live lobster into boiling water, then pull it out and check whether it was alive?

Re: PETA Targets Lobster Game

Those lobsters have a better chance at living in this claw machine than in a regular tank.

 

Re: PETA Targets Lobster Game

If it was me, I'd have just left the game up and advertised it more with the phrase "PETA hates this game" or something.  Most people know not to give PETA the smallest shred of credibility.  They're like JT if he was an environmentalist.

---------------------------------

So speak I, some random guy.

Re: PETA Targets Lobster Game

With the nuts in that group they'd probably break in and "free" the lobsters and this burn the place down. >_>

 

Hell, they still might.

Re: PETA Targets Lobster Game

Seriously? This is what has PeTA's panties in a bunch? I'm with the dude on this one. Never mind the fact that lobsters are boiled alive to kill 'em and cook 'em. And the fact that they don't feel a thing.

Re: PETA Targets Lobster Game

And you know they don't feel a thing how, exactly?

Re: PETA Targets Lobster Game

I do.  I was a lobster in another life, PETA thug.

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