Posted on 06/03/2008 6:38:57 AM PDT by wbill
SKOWHEGAN, Maine - People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals has sent a proposal to the Somerset County commissioners to lease their jail for the world’s first Lobster Empathy Center.
The central Maine county is constructing a new jail and has put the century-old jail in downtown Skowhegan up for sale. The Realtor handling the sale called the offer "likely a publicity stunt."
"A prison is the perfect setting to demonstrate how lobsters suffer when they are caught in traps or confined to cramped, filthy supermarket tanks," PETA wrote in a June 2 letter to the commissioners. "The center will teach visitors to have compassion for these interesting, sensitive animals while also commemorating the millions of lobsters who are ripped from their homes in the ocean off the coast of Maine each year before being boiled alive."
Commissioner Chairman Phil Roy, who doesn’t care for lobster, was at a loss for words Monday afternoon.
"I’m shocked and I don’t know what to say. I didn’t realize Skowhegan was the coastal community PETA was looking for," Roy said, with tongue in cheek.
As the crow flies, the distance from Skowhegan to Rockland, home of the Maine Lobster Festival and a lobster fishing port, is approximately 53 miles.
"The lobster capital of the state of Maine certainly isn’t here," Roy said. He said it was odd that PETA would object to the jail conditions for lobsters but had never filed a complaint on behalf of the human inmates incarcerated there.
PETA said the center would include educational displays and "testimonials from top independent scientists confirming that lobsters feel pain just like other animals."
PETA said the center would feature interactive exhibits such as a human-size lobster trap where visitors can have their fingers wrapped in large rubber bands that will remain on for their entire visit.
"At that point, visitors can be moved to a small, filth-strewn glass tank where they will be crammed together and confined for up to an hour," the proposal states.
The center also would include a concession stand that would include faux lobster treats, and children would receive free stuffed toy lobsters labeled "Lobster Are Friends, Not Food."
"Mainers have been dragging lobsters from their ocean homes for generations," said PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk. "It’s time for them to learn that these fascinating animals deserve more than being treated as mere commodities."
Roy said that even if the offer is a publicity stunt and a waste of the commissioners’ time, it would be treated the same as any other and has been forwarded to the Realtor handling the jail’s sale.
Amy McLellan of Dawson Commercial Realty said all offers would be considered although the county has no interest in leasing the jail. "The property needs to be sold," she said. "Leasing is not an option, but we will look at everything. However, our big thing is not so much the price as the use. The county wants to provide jobs and get the property back on the tax rolls."
McLellan said there is extraordinary interest in the jail. "We are currently working on 22 leads," she said.
One recent offer was made by entrepreneur Amber Lambke of Skowhegan, who has proposed purchasing the jail for a gristmill, artists colony, bakery and other cultural uses.
Those crazy PETA people! Personally, I'll consider getting empathetic with a lobster this weekend. Perhaps with some drawn butter and lemon.
Call their bluff and make them put their money where their mouth is. Offer to sell the building to them.
But I DO emphathize with the lobsters.
First I emphathize, then I EAT them.
SORRY, empathize...
They should sell it to them for a good profit. THEN their inspectors ought to nit pick until it opens, generating further costs to peta.
it will be a money sink to peta reducing the amount of cash they will have for other things.
Lobster Empathy Center.......
Hope they build a Butter Empathy Center right next door.
This is insanity. A lobster has about the same type of nervous system (and thus, capacity to feel pain) as a cockroach or a grasshopper. I wonder how PETA feels about people killing cockroaches or eating grasshoppers.
Does this mean the PETAns will drop themselves in boiling water then bathe in clarified butter with a lemon spritz???
I just went by the cupboard and saw a container of cherrios staring back at me.
Those little darlings were stripped from their mother plant, processed, and placed in confinement.
At least I put them in a clear plastic, screw on container, so's they could look around at the other unfortunates, until they met the mouth.
Ohh. And I just love animals, they’re just so - so - mm- tasty.
One can only hope. Will be the first bath that most of them have had in awhile.
Ideally, they'll leave their clothes on, though. Otherwise, we're talking about a nightmare of hair.
Well done, indeed!
Ayah, and add 26 miles if you can't fly and have to drive.
Ayuh. But at least you can get thayah from heah.
Lobsters have the brain of a grasshopper. They are a bug.
What is PETA doing about the billions of grasshoppers that are being mercilessly chopped to bits by lawn mower blades? What of those bugs that are smashed all over the front of their very own vehicles?
And yes, I do know that there are PETA idiots out there who would share a bowl of shredded wheat and soy milk with a cockroach, so as not to disturb a creature that they consider to be their equal.
With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size,
Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes.
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