CHINCOTEAGUE, Va. (Delmarva Now) — A billboard touting PETA's push to promote humane treatment of all living creatures, specifically crabs, was erected recently in Baltimore.
The billboard — that show a picture of a crab with the words, "I'm me, not meat" — appeared in the middle of the city's Vegan Restaurant Week, but is directly related to the upcoming Baltimore Seafood Festival in September, said PETA spokeswoman Amber Canavan.
"We wanted to put it where people are, you know, actually eating crabs," said Canavan. She said another of the crab billboards was erected in Idlewild, a coastal New Jersey resort.
There are, she said, no plans for a billboard in Chincoteague or anywhere else in Maryland. Other billboards in the campaign feature lobsters, fish, chickens and cows, and are placed based on the local traditions and culture that include dishes made from their flesh.
People's Ethical Treatment of Animals, based in Norfolk, Virginia, is hoping to create a public conversation about what Canavan described as cruelty to crustaceans like crabs and lobsters.
"You wouldn't throw a living cat or dog into a pot of boiling water," she said. "So why would you do that to a crab?"
The important reason for the billboard campaign, Canavan said, is to raise awareness among people to get them thinking and talking about what actually happens to animals, including crustaceans, before they are ready for the dinner table.
"We have no reason to think their final moments, as their limbs are being torn off or they are being cooked in boiling water, that they feel the same agonizing pain we would," she said.
Canavan went on to explain how scientists have determined crabs are individuals that feel pain and communicate with one another, even cooperate in certain activities.
"They might not look like us or be as easy for humans to relate to as dogs or cats, but they deserve to not be abused, to be recognized as individual beings," she said.
Canavan said PETA also has a "Top 10 Vegan Seafood" list compiled by a Baltimore restaurant.
So far the billboard has done exactly what it was intended to do.
"We clearly hit a nerve," she said. "If we hadn't, people wouldn't be talking about it like this."
PETA has a contentious relationship with Delmarva, particularly the Eastern Shore of Virginia, in Accomack and Northampton counties.
In July, the group called for the end of the annual Chincoteague Pony Swim after a horse accidentally died after it was chasing another house inside a pen. Residents have not forgotten about a pet Chihuahua that was taken from its owner's porch by a PETA employee a few years ago and euthanized.
"That was a mistake," said Canavan, "It never should have happened. That person is no longer employed by PETA."
