A PETA supporter bodypainted as a stone crab will writhe atop a giant dinner plate in downtown Jacksonville, where Winn-Dixie’s headquarters is located, surrounded by protesters and a banner reading, “It’s a Rip-Off! I Feel Pain, and I Need My Claws!” The protest follows PETA’s release of new video footage that shows workers ripping the limbs off live crabs for a Winn-Dixie supplier and tossing the mutilated animals back into the ocean to suffer and die a prolonged death.
When: The intersection of N. Laura and W. Monroe streets, Jacksonville
Where: Friday, April 15, 12 noon
“Crabs need their claws to feed and defend themselves, yet they’re being torn apart limb by limb and tossed overboard to die,” says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman. “PETA is calling on anyone disturbed by this violence to leave animals in peace and off their plates.”
The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) requires that claws be torn off live stone crabs—which causes agonizing pain and would otherwise be illegal under the state’s cruelty-to-animals law—so PETA, the largest animal rights organization in the world, is now challenging the requirement with a formal rule-making petition to ban this conduct. PETA’s attorneys are making the case that the FWC allows Florida’s $30 million annual stone crab claw industry to operate in an illegal manner.
The group also filed a criminal complaint with the FWC regarding workers on the vessel that supplied Keys Fisheries, the largest seller of stone crab claws in the state. PETA’s video footage shows workers slamming a shark against the boat and appearing to carve out chunks of the animal’s flesh; ripping the mantles, which house the hearts and other organs, off live octopuses; and tearing live lobsters’ tails off before tossing the animals back, still living, into the water—all actions that experts concur cause pain.
Broadcast-quality video footage is available for download here, and photographs are available here.
PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat” and which opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview—notes that many faux-fish options are available today, such as Sophie’s Kitchen’s Plant-Based Crab Cakes, Gardein’s F’sh Filets, Plant-Based Tuna from Good Catch, and New Wave Foods’ new Plant-based Shrimp.
For more information, please visit PETA.org or follow the group on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram.
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This post was originally published on Animal Rights and Campaign News | PETA.