Latest news with #PeoplefortheEthicalTreatmentofAnimals
USA Today
8 hours ago
- General
- USA Today
PETA sues Maine Lobster Festival, says 16,000 lobsters boiled alive are 'tortured'
Animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) has lodged a lawsuit against one of the largest seafood events in the U.S., calling it an "egregious" display of "torture and torment." Filed July 24 in Knox County Superior Court in Maine, the suit accuses the Maine Lobster Festival and the city of Rockland, where it's been hosted annually for nearly 80 years, of engaging in large-scale animal cruelty. Tens of thousands of visitors flock to the festival, where 20,000 pounds of lobster are served each year, according to the festival website. The result is a "nuisance to the public," at the center of which is an act of "extreme animal suffering," PETA alleges in its complaint. The suit seeks a permanent injunction prohibiting the steaming of live lobsters on public land. Lawsuit calls lobster festival "cruelty" PETA alleges that the act of boiling 16,000 lobsters alive is a violation of a Maine law that requires sentient animals be killed with methods that result in "instantaneous death." The festival's current practice of chilling the lobsters before steaming them is inadequate to prevent suffering, claims PETA, as it does not render them unconscious but merely inhibits their motor function temporarily. The complaint also alleges that "scientific consensus" has deemed lobsters sentient and capable of feeling pain and, therefore, the practice of boiling them alive violates state law while also occupying Harbor Park and interfering with the public's right to use the community space. 'By openly cooking thousands of thinking, feeling animals alive, the Maine Lobster Festival is effectively turning public land into a venue for municipally supported cruelty,' PETA Foundation Director of Litigation Asher Smith said in a statement shared with USA TODAY. 'PETA is pushing to end these horrific displays and restore compassionate Rockland residents' ability to enjoy Harbor Park year-round.' Boiling lobsters alive is legal and standard, says lobster fest In a statement shared with the Penobscot Bay Pilot, organizers said the festival's current practices adhere to both legal and industry standards. "The methods we use to prepare lobster at the festival follow widely accepted and legal culinary practices that have been in place in homes, restaurants, and seafood festivals across the globe for generations," the statement shared with the Bay Pilot said. "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." Festival organizers also argue in the statement that there is "no conclusive scientific consensus that lobsters feel pain in a way comparable to mammals." While some research shows the possibility of sentience, it said, the research is not conclusive and the state of Maine has not classified the crustaceans as sentient animals protected by anti-cruelty laws. "To our knowledge, we have not received any complaints from local residents about this issue," said the festival's response to PETA's allegations of public disruption. "No one is required to view or participate in the lobster cooking process, there are plenty of other sites to see at our event." The festival begins on Wednesday, July 30 and runs through Sunday, Aug. 3. The Maine Lobster Festival did not immediately respond to USA TODAY's request for comment.
Daily Mail
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
PETA slammed over Ozzy Osbourne tribute praising his love for animals: 'Bats would like a word'
Amid the flood of tributes to Ozzy Osbourne after his death at 76 this week, one has been met by a deluge of scathing backlash. PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals), who are famous for publicly slamming celebrities they feel are cruel to wildlife, issued a warm statement in which they saluted Ozzy for 'the gentle side he showed to animals.' The testimonial came 43 years after he bit the head off a live bat during a Black Sabbath concert in Iowa, a moment that passed instantly into showbiz history. Ozzy subsequently insisted he believed the bat was made out of rubber when a fan threw it onstage at him, and he has expressed regret at how the drunken stunt snowballed into an indelible part of his legacy. He once ruefully observed: 'Whatever else I do, my epitaph will be: "Born December 3, 1948. Died, whenever. And he bit the head off a bat."' In light of the incident, PETA 's memorial tweet to Ozzy came in for blistering mockery from fans, one of whom joked that bats 'would like a word.' 'How dare you! He killed a bat on stage by biting off it's head! How do you support such things!?!?!?' another X user exclaimed in the replies. 'I honestly thought this was a satire account posting this,' gasped a third, while a fourth posted a meme of a bat saying: 'Are you kidding me?' Some social media users reacted with hilarity, posting replies like: 'RI-PETA' and: 'The person who wrote this post was born after the 80s.' 'Don't bats lives matter?' demanded an X user, as another sarcastically wrote: 'Be more like Ozzie, bite the heads off of live bats.' 'I had to check this was not the Onion twice,' admitted a fan, while another was left wondering: 'Are you serious or is this about to lead to a bat controversy?' PETA's tribute made no mention of the bat incident at all, focusing instead on Ozzy's animal rights activism in recent years, particularly a campaign he collaborated with the pressure group on in the early 2010s. 'Ozzy Osbourne was a legend and a provocateur, but PETA will remember the 'Prince of Darkness' most fondly for the gentle side he showed to animals - most recently cats, by using his fame to decry painful, crippling declawing mutilations,' they said. 'Ozzy may have been the singer, but his wife, Sharon, and his daughter, Kelly, were of one voice when it meant protecting animals. Ozzy will be missed by animal advocates the world over,' the statement concluded. PETA and Ozzy's crusade against cat-declawing included a poster of the rocker with his fingertips severed, blood gushing down his hands. 'Amputating a cat's toes is twisted and wrong,' Ozzy said at the time. 'If your couch is more important to you than your cat's health and happiness, you don't deserve to have an animal! Get cats a scratching post - don't mutilate them for life.' Ozzy's wife Sharon also worked with PETA on an anti-fur video and donated her personal collection of fur coats to the organization, while their daughter Kelly has posed for the outfit's 'Save the Seals' initiative. The musician's PETA activism came near the end of a relationship with animals that markedly evolved over the course of his life. During his early years, Ozzy dropped out of school at the age of 15 and drifted between a string of odd jobs including one in a slaughterhouse. After he became a rock star, he and Sharon owned a sprawling clowder of cats, but at the height of his addictions he massacred them in a drug-induced frenzy. 'I was taking drugs so much I was a f***ed. The final straw came when I shot all our cats,' he recalled later, placing the incident in the early 1980s. 'We had about 17, and I went crazy and shot them all. My wife found me under the piano in a white suit – a shotgun in one hand and a knife in the other.' In 1981, one year before the notorious bat incident, Ozzy also bit the head off a dove during a meeting with CBS, though various versions of the story contain conflicting accounts of whether the bird was alive at the time. Ozzy told biographer Nick Wall that he had planned to bring three live doves to the meeting in order to release them there as a peace symbol. Instead, having guzzled brandy all morning, he got so fed up of a chattering PR professional at CBS that he 'pulled out one of these doves and bit its f***ing head off just to shut her up,' he said for the book Black Sabbath: Symptoms of the Universe. 'Then I did it again with the next dove, spitting the head out on the table,' Ozzy added. 'That's when they threw me out. They said I'd never work for CBS again.' His fauna-related antics during his drug years included snorting a trail of ants while on tour with Motley Crue and talking to a horse for an hour while under the influence of LSD, the latter episode prompting him to give up that particular substance. After he was jettisoned from Black Sabbath in 1979 over his spiraling addictions, he embarked on a 1981 solo tour and developed a habit of flinging 'bits of meat and animal parts into the audience,' Ozzy shared. 'I thought it was hilarious.' Members of the crowd responded by throwing back 'sheep testicles, live snakes, dead rats, all kinds of things,' he recalled. 'Someone once threw a live frog onstage. It was the biggest frog I'd ever seen, and it landed on its back.' He grew gentler in later life, and his affection for his pet cats was memorably documented on his hit reality show The Osbournes. In one clip that repeatedly went viral in recent years, Ozzy was seen clambering up onto a dressing table to retrieve a cat that had scurried to the top of the mirror frame. As members of his family shrieked in panic, he grew increasingly exasperated and started upbraiding them to 'shut the f*** up' and 'stop screaming.' He died this week surrounded by his loved ones after a years-long battle with Parkinson's disease, eliciting a worldwide outpouring of grief. Tributes abounded from fans and friends - and even from the Alamo, decades after he urinated on its cenotaph and was banned from the city of San Antonio before publicly apologizing and eventually revisiting the landmark in 2016.
Perth Now
7 days ago
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Animal rights group PETA pay unexpected tribute to bat-biter Ozzy Osbourne
PETA has paid an unlikely tribute to Ozzy Osbourne. The Black Sabbath rocker, who died aged 76 on Tuesday (22.07.25), notoriously bit the head off of a bat during a concert in Iowa in 1982 but has been remembered fondly by animal rights group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals for the "gentle side" he showed to creatures after teaming up with organisation to campaign against the declawing of cats. PETA posted on its website and social media channels: "Ozzy Osbourne was a legend and a provocateur, but PETA will remember the 'Prince of Darkness' most fondly for the gentle side he showed to animals - most recently cats, by using his fame to decry painful, crippling declawing mutilations. "Ozzy may have been the singer, but his wife, Sharon, and their daughter, Kelly, were of one voice when it meant protecting animals. "Ozzy will be missed by animal advocates the world over." The Crazy Train artist joined forces with PETA in 2020 to speak out on the declawing of felines and featured in an advertising campaign feature his bloodied hands with the tagline: "It's an amputation. Not a manicure." Ozzy said at the time: "Amputating a cat's toes is twisted and wrong. If your couch is more important to you than your cat's health and happiness, you don't deserve to have an animal! Get cats a scratching post - don't mutilate them for life." The rocker claimed in his 2010 autobiography I Am Ozzy that he chomped down on the bat's head as he was convinced that it was just a rubber toy throw on stage by a rowdy audience during his Diary of a Madman Tour. Osbourne wrote: "Immediately, though, something felt wrong. Very wrong. For a start my mouth was instantly full of this warm, gloopy liquid. Then the head in my mouth twitched. "Somebody threw a bat. I just thought it was a rubber bat. And I picked it up and put it in my mouth. I bit into it. "Oh no, it's real. It was a real live bat." However, Ozzy told the BBC in 2006 that the bat wasn't alive when it was thrown on stage. He recalled: "This bat comes on. I thought it was one of them Halloween joke bats because it had some string around its neck. "I bite into it, and I look to my left and Sharon was going (gesturing no). "And I'm like, what you talking about? She (says), 'It's a real dead bat.' And I'm... I know now!"
Time of India
7 days ago
- General
- Time of India
Orphaned pets find new homes
Kozhikode: Thirteen pets left homeless after their owners were killed in Mundakkai-Chooralmala landslide in Wayanad are now safe and healthy outside the state. The disaster killed 2,775 animals, including 81 cows, 50 rabbits, 16 goats, five buffaloes and 2,623 chickens and caused losses to 202 dairy farmers. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The animal husbandry department (AHD), with help from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), handed over nine cats, five kittens, and two dogs for adoption. Of the lot, one cat and two kittens, found severely weak, died during transport. The remaining 13 pets are now cared for in states like UP, Rajasthan, and Himachal Pradesh, said PETA's Senior Director (Veterinary Affairs), Dr Mini Aravindan. AHD treated 234 animals injured in the disaster. Private donors, dairy farmer groups and veterinary college alumni donated large amounts of fodder and nutritional supplements for the surviving animals. Authorities gave Rs 18.02 lakh in compensation to 23 farmers who lost their cattle. They have identified 178 families for livelihood rehabilitation, with immediate assistance planned for 78 of them. In March, state disaster management authority had granted approval to construct a shelter home in Wayanad to relocate domestic animals during disasters. The shelter home was planned at Kottathara grama panchayat on 50 cents provided by the panchayat and the project will be implemented jointly by DDMA, panchayat and Humane Society International, India at a cost of Rs 69.5 lakh.
Ya Biladi
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Ya Biladi
2030 World Cup : David Hallyday urges FIFA to address alleged «culling of dogs» in Morocco
French singer and musician David Hallyday has made an urgent appeal to the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA), voicing his concerns over what he describes as the «cruel culling of stray dogs» in Morocco, in the lead-up to the 2030 World Cup, which the country is co-hosting alongside Spain and Portugal. In a letter shared by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Hallyday, son of the legendary Johnny Hallyday, addresses FIFA's president, condemning the «animal cruelty» that he claims «breaches Morocco's pledge to FIFA to protect animals». In his letter, the artist calls on Gianni Infantino to «pressure Morocco to halt the dog culling, or suspend its co-hosting status». He highlights that Morocco's World Cup bid included commitments to «safeguard animal rights» and «establish clinics and support initiatives for stray dogs». However, Hallyday argues that the kingdom is «failing to meet these promises, putting three million homeless dogs at risk of being poisoned, shot, or burned alive». «The thought that dogs like my own, Phoenix and Cooper, are forced to fight for survival on the streets, having done nothing wrong, only to be brutally killed by humans, fills me with profound sadness and anger», writes David Hallyday. He urges FIFA to «condemn these actions» and «enforce suitable sanctions».
