Why PETA's Latest Protest is Making Everyone Talk About Lobsters

PETA staged a protest outside the Maine Lobster Festival on Wednesday by having a woman lie topless on a giant plate, body-painted red to look like a lobster, next to a lemon wedge and a bowl of melted butter. The display, set up near the main entrance at the intersection of Myrtle Street and Main Street in Rockland, carried the message: "Try to Relate to Who's on Your Plate." It did not go entirely to plan - or perhaps it did. PETA shared photos of the protest on X , and they went viral almost immediately. The online reaction focused less on animal welfare and more on the woman on the plate. Several commenters noted they were now thinking about lobster more than ever. What was PETA protesting? The Maine Lobster Festival, which runs from July 29 to August 2 this year, is a five-day event that has been held annually in Rockland since 1947. Around 16,000 live lobsters are steamed at the festival each year. PETA wants that to stop. "It's extremely cruel and unnecessary, and everyone can go vegan and stop eating lobsters today," PETA campaigner Mason Melito said at the scene. PETA founder Ingrid Newkirk went further, asking the festival's board to rename the event 'The Red Death Festival' and replace the lobster-eating contest with something called 'The Heat Challenge', where participants would endure increasingly high temperatures to simulate what lobsters go through when they are boiled alive. "The Maine Lobster Festival celebrates the torment and massacre of thousands of sentient animals, who feel pain as keenly as any dog, cat, or child," Newkirk said. "No meal is worth such cruelty." Has PETA protested the Maine Lobster Festival before? Many times. PETA has been turning up to the festival for over a decade. In 2013, it protested allegations that Linda Bean's Maine Lobster was abusing its animals. In 2016, a woman went topless and wore giant lobster claws while lying next to a bowl of melted butter in a near-identical stunt that drew the same reaction: people took photos, posted them online, and then went inside to eat lobster. In 2025, PETA escalated to legal action. The organisation sued the festival and the City of Rockland, seeking to have the steaming of live lobsters declared a public nuisance and banned from public land. A state judge dismissed the lawsuit in January 2026, ruling that the activity did not legally qualify as a nuisance. "Because the complaint fails to allege facts sufficient to establish the special injury requirement of a public nuisance claim, the court need not address the arguments about whether live lobster steaming constitutes a nuisance," Judge Patrick Larson wrote. Having lost in court, PETA went back to the plate. What is PETA's argument about lobsters? PETA says lobsters have complex nervous systems and feel intense pain when dismembered or boiled alive. The organisation argues they can recognise individual lobsters, carry their babies for about nine months, and can live for over 100 years. The seafood industry and most marine biologists have historically pushed back on this, noting that lobsters do not have a centralised brain in the way mammals do and that the science on whether they experience suffering in a way comparable to vertebrates remains contested. That debate is unlikely to be settled by a woman lying on a plate outside a lobster festival in Maine. But PETA has never been an organisation that worries too much about whether its protests change minds on the spot. The goal is attention, and - by that measure - the lobster protest worked. PETA's protest certainly drew some attention. Credit: PETA What has the reaction been? Exactly what you would expect. The photos went everywhere. The woman on the plate trended on multiple platforms. Comments ranged from supportive to bemused to openly hungry. "PETA, I'm pretty sure that whatever goal they were trying to achieve against people eating lobsters missed the mark," another added. A third summed up the general sentiment: "The goal is engagement. They knocked that out of the park." Which is, of course, the point. PETA presumably does not expect a topless woman painted red to stop anyone from ordering lobster. It expects the photos to be shared a million times, and for lobster welfare to sit in the back of someone's mind the next time they look at a menu. Whether that works is a separate question. The Maine Lobster Festival continues through Sunday. Around 16,000 lobsters will be steamed. PETA will be outside for much of it. Featured image credit: PETA