PETA to do flyover at Maine Lobster Festival

When attendees arrive for the first day of the Maine Lobster Festival Wednesday, they'll be in for a surprise, courtesy of PETA, which has arranged for a plane to fly over the event with a banner that proclaims, "Keep Your Paws off Their Claws! Try Vegan."

The plane will circle the Lobster Festival Wednesday, July 30, from 12:15 to 2:30 p.m. They will circle the grounds for 15 minutes at intervals of 15 minutes, according to a news release from PETA.

PETA, whose motto says, in part, that "animals are not ours to eat," hopes to remind festival-goers that lobsters feel pain and fear yet are killed in gruesome ways to be turned into seafood.

PETA's recent investigation, peta.org/action/action-alerts/undercover-expose-reveals-live-lobsters-crabs-torn-apart-2/>, of Linda Bean's Maine Lobster's slaughterhouse revealed that live lobsters were impaled, torn apart, and decapitated — even as their legs continued to move frantically.

"[Twenty] million of these sensitive animals, who carry their young for nine months, take long-distance trips and hold claws with their young, are still slaughtered for our plates every year in the U.S. alone," wrote B-52s singer Fred Schneider in an op-ed printed on the front page of the Portland Press Herald last week in advance of the fest. This year is the 35th anniversary of the B-52s' hit single "Rock Lobster," and Schneider urges everyone to let lobsters "rock on" by steering clear of lobster festivals.

For more information, please visit PETA.org.