Crab feast called cruel to animals
Environmental group protests charity event
David Carrigg, The Province
Published: Thursday, August 17, 2006
The SPCA is in hot water over plans to make money from a crab boil.
"How incredibly bizarre," said Paul Watson, Greenpeace co-founder and founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society.
"Here we have an organization supposedly dedicated to preventing cruelty actually inflicting cruelty to an animal to raise money to supposedly prevent cruelty to animals."
The live-crab boil is slated for Aug. 27 at Mariners' Park in Prince Rupert, with the crabs to be provided by the Crabbers Association of Prince Rupert.
For $10, a live crab will be tossed in boiling water and the purchaser can then take it home to eat.
Money raised will go to the B.C. SPCA's Prince Rupert branch.
Kristine Vasik of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society said the society is co-ordinating an international campaign among animal-rights groups to send protest e-mails to the SPCA.
Vasik provided an e-mail from SPCA spokeswoman Lorie Chortyk, dated yesterday, saying the number of e-mails she had received had overwhelmed her computer.
"The difficulty . . . was that so many e-mails came in that they crashed my system so I didn't even get an opportunity to read them," Chortyk wrote.
Last November, the European Food Safety Authority's Animal Health and Welfare panel concluded all decapod crustaceans, including lobsters and crabs, appear to have some degree of awareness, feel pain and can learn.
Other scientists claim lobsters have such primitive insect-like nervous systems that they can't experience pain the way animals and humans do.
Chortyk could not be reached.