flickr / CC

Long before I kicked animal flesh out of my diet, I celebrated my birthdays by eating lobster.

As in, let me celebrate my birth by paying a cook to throw a fully conscious, feeling being into a pot of boiling water to scald to death for my dinner. Ugh.

No wonder my heart skips a beat whenever I read about a caring person who liberates a lobster from a filthy lobster tank so that the animal can be returned to the sea. So my heart nearly burst out of my rib cage when I read that a Slovenian tourist and his daughter bought 30 lobsters for 1,300 euros (more than US$1,860) from a Croatian hotel-restaurant called Hotel Niko in order to free them.

Thirty lobsters have been spared excruciatingly painful deaths and have been returned to the ocean.

Tonight, I'll be celebrating their release with some "Mock Lobster."

Posted by Karin Bennett

Remember when we told you about the 140-year-old, 20-pound lobster confined to a tank inside New York restaurant City Crab and Seafood? Well, after initially denying PETA's request to release the ancient crustacean, the good folks at City Crab have had a change of heart and have agreed to send the lucky lobster back home—i.e., into the sea. (Yay!)

City Crab and PETA are hosting a bon voyage event to see off the lobster, who will be sent back to a watery habitat in style. Pretty exciting if you ask me! Next step: ban catching lobsters completely. Lobsters don't deserve to be pulled from their ocean home and kept in tiny tanks in their own waste and then boiled alive.

A huge "thank you" goes out to City Crab for this compassionate decision. To celebrate this victory for lobsters everywhere, I encourage you to try our recipe for mock lobster.

PS If you want to become a "lobster libber" and help liberate lobsters in your hometown, check out our suggestions for how you can get active here.

PPS You know how life sometimes imitates art? Click here to see just how true that really is.

Posted by Liz Graffeo

Infinitejestchallenge / CC

Hailed by the Boston Globe as "probably the most important novelist of his generation," author David Foster Wallace was found dead—apparently because of suicide—on Friday night at his home in California.

Although famous for authoring The Broom of the System and the best-selling Infinite Jest: A Novel and Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, loyal PETA supporters may best remember David Foster Wallace for his philosophical piece written for Gourmet magazine.

In the groundbreaking "Consider the Lobster," Wallace wondered, "Is it all right to boil a sentient creature alive just for our gustatory pleasure?"

Wallace explored the excruciating pain that lobsters feel when they are boiled alive, writing, "[A]fter all the abstract intellection, there remain the facts of the frantically clanking lid, the pathetic clinging to the edge of the pot. Standing at the stove, it is hard to deny in any meaningful way that this is a living creature experiencing pain and wishing to avoid/escape the painful experience."

In memory of this remarkable man, let us keep his respect for animals alive by practicing kindness and compassion toward all beings every day by rejecting cruelty at the dinner table. For more information and to order a free "Vegetarian Starter Kit," please visit GoVeg.com.

To read David Foster Wallace's article in full, go here.

Posted by Carrie Ann Harris

Without letting even the tiniest opportunity to help nonhuman animals swim by, my inventive comrades have devised a delightful new stratagem to help free some of our sea-dwelling sisters and brothers.

The Pitch: To open the world's fist-ever Lobster Empathy Center in the lobster-execution capital of the world (Creative, yes?)
The Setting: A prison (Bloody genius!)

mikefeeney / CC

In the state that boasts the world's "best" (read "most evil") entrées of lobsters boiled alive—or still struggling on a plate, only to be eaten alive—the lovely town of Skowhegan, Maine, has unassumingly put their jailhouse up for sale. Muwahahahahahahaha! So with foresight in our eyes and love for crawly crustaceans in our hearts, we placed our bid to lease the space with a theme so poetically apropos: "A prison is the perfect setting to demonstrate how lobsters suffer when they are caught in traps or confined to cramped, filthy supermarket tanks," our offer letter explains.

The proposed attraction would include wrapping visitors' hands in giant rubber bands for the duration of their stay, serving faux-lobster treats, and giving kiddies free stuffed toy lobsters labeled "Lobsters Are Friends, Not Food."

Can't wait to go, right? I know, me neither! Sadly, our dreams will have to be put on hold for a bit, as the prison was just sold to the highest bidder. But do keep us in mind if you hear of any sweet oceanfront prison property up for grabs!

Now if all this talk has given you a hankering for some vegan lobster tail, here's a recipe to satisfy your urgings.

—Missy

Posted by Missy Lane

People will cling on to the most unlikely notions if it means that they can keep doing something they enjoy but know deep down is wrong. And sad as it is to say, there are going to be people who continue to ignore or deny the fact that crustaceans feel pain despite mountains of evidence that this is the case—including the study published in New Scientist today, which shows that lobsters, crabs, and other crustaceans all share pain sensitivity. Which means (just in case anyone needs this spelled out) that cramming them into pots of boiling water while they’re still alive should be a jailable offense. Literally. We prosecute people for equivalent cruelty to cats or dogs, so a lobster bake shouldn’t be any different.

Setting that aside for a second, I hate the fact that this study was ever done in the first place. The notion of a bunch of grown men and women in labcoats prodding lobsters to see if they react and then pompously announcing to the scientific community, that “yes, they do react,” would frankly be laughable if it weren’t for the fact that these animals suffered to prove what we all know intuitively already: That there’s something horribly wrong with the way we treat these animals, and that no matter how much someone might enjoy the taste of lobster, there is simply no way to justify torturing a living being for the sake of a palate preference.

If you haven’t read it yet, you should definitely check out the essay Consider the Lobster, by David Foster Wallace (who happens, incidentally, to be my favorite living author). It’s a fascinating analysis of the ethics related to this issue from the point of view of someone who had never given it any thought at all, until he was assigned to write about a lobster festival for Gourmet magazine. You can find that here.

Austin360/Creative Commons

You may have heard that Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was recently outed as a frequent poster on a Yahoo message board. I’m sure it brings up all sorts of issues for the company and for him personally, but I think the guy deserves a pat on the back for his posts on animal welfare. It’s a real shame that more CEOs aren’t as enlightened as Mackey on this issue. Check out this quote that is being attributed to him:

"Everything that is alive is going to die someday (even you). What matters is the quality of life while something is alive. The fact that food animals are going to eventually die to feed humans doesn't mean that the quality of their lives is therefore irrelevant and should be ignored (since you are also mortal does the quality of your own life not matter either?). Quite the opposite. All sentient beings are worthy of being treated with respect and consideration IMO and that includes lobsters. Minimizing their pain is a worthy and admirable goal IMO. I admire Whole Foods for having animal welfare standards and for continually evolving them--and their ban on selling live lobsters is another positive evolutionary step on behalf of animals. . . .”

Amazing. You can check out the full story here.

Victory! Raley's has discontinued the sale of live lobsters.

Update: After Thousands of Complaints From Customers, Raley's Has Agreed to Discontinue the Sale of Live Lobsters in Its Stores!

Earlier this week, a customer of Raley's—which is a popular grocery chain in Nevada, New Mexico, and California—sent PETA disturbing pictures of live lobsters kept in tiny plastic containers barely larger than the lobsters' bodies in a Raley's store. After PETA put an action alert up on our site last night, thousands of people wrote to the company to ask that they abandon this cruel practice immediately and consider following in the footsteps of chains like Safeway and Whole Foods and discontinue the sale of live lobsters entirely.

This morning, we received an e-mail from Raley's announcing that the company would do just that! Raley's Spokesperson Nicole Townsend gave PETA the following statement:

Raley’s Family of Fine Stores offered live Maine lobsters to our customers for three days during the holiday season. Raley's will not repeat this promotion or offer live lobsters in any of its stores.

It goes without saying that this is a massive victory for lobsters everywhere, who suffer immeasurably in grocery-store lobster tanks before being boiled alive. Raley's compassionate decision—along with the example of Safeway and Whole Foods—sends a strong message to supermarkets everywhere that cruelty of this sort simply will not be tolerated. A huge thank you to everyone who took the time to write to Raley's about this issue! Thanks to your kindness, countless lobsters will be saved from a horrific fate.