Boil and Bubble, lots of trouble

There’s been quite the reaction to Paul Watson and the Sea Shepherd Society stepping into the plans of the local SPCA to raise funds with a crab boil in late August. Ever since the e mail campaign began and the eventual cancellation of the event was announced on Thursday, local residents have been amazed and perhaps even a little shocked at the some of the extreme reactions of those opposed to the fund raising plans.

From the editorial page of the Daily News, to the bulletin board of the web portal hackingthemainframe, today’s development has become the main topic around town.

Watson’s original e mail led to a flood of e mails to the Prince Rupert offices of the SPCA and even resulted in a phone call suggesting that if the Crab boil went ahead, the SPCA building itself could be subject to a bombing.

Those against the plan suggested that it was hypocritical of the society dedicated to protecting animals from cruelty to subject sea creatures to a boiling process. Though one wonders what was going through the head of the would be bomber, who would have no doubt killed dozens if not hundreds of animals of all kinds (not to mention a human or two as well) had he or she followed through on their insane protest.

Regardless, one assumes that the Folks at the Sea Shepherd society got what they desired, a load of attention and the end of the fundraising project. However, as you will notice by checking out the topic board at htmf, their side of the argument hasn’t particularly won many converts in the local community. In fact, it’s safe to say that a good number of people acquaint Watson and his society more with terrorism, rather than activism.

It’s of interest to note that Watson himself, feels that he played no role in the threats that the SPCA received, a handy bit of deflection, since it was his “call to action” that began the slow boil of emotions that quickly roiled up and swamped the local office of the SPCA

It’s almost the kind of thing you might expect to see on David Letterman or Jay Leno, such is the rather extreme reaction to a seemingly innocent bit of local fundraising. Though we suspect that Lettermen or Leno would probably have their fun with the SPCA boiling a crab, there is some potential comedic (warped we admit) material in such a thing.

However, as Earl Gale points out in his editorial today, boiling is how one prepares a crab for eating, something that has been done through the ages and something that is as common as it gets in the Northwest. If the folks at the Sea Shepherd Society have a better way of doing things, then perhaps they should share it with the rest of us, providing they live to tell the tale.

The Daily News had the local angle of the story in its Friday edition, including an editorial page entry from Earle Gale, the Managing Editor of the paper.

ACTIVISTS STIR THE POT OVER SPCA CRAB FEAST
Shell-shocked local organizers are forced to cancel fundraiser after international protests
By Sarah Fox
The Daily News
Friday, August 18, 2006
Pages One and Three

International animal rights activist Paul Watson’s call of protest over the Prince Rupert SPCA’s fundraising Crab Feast sparked protest letters and a possible bomb threat aimed at the Prince Rupert animal shelter.

According to the Prince Rupert RCMP, the event triggered unexpected controversy that led to the SPCA receiving a number of protests, including one phone call suggesting that their facility would be blown up if the event was allowed to take place August 27.

The SPCA officially cancelled their fundraiser yesterday.

Watson said that he emailed his “international network of 18,000 people” asking them to email and telephone both the local shelter and the B. C. SPCA headquarters in Vancouver to express their outrage that the society would choose to boil live crabs for a fundraising event.

“It’s the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, so it’s somewhat hypocritical to raise funds to prevent cruelty, while inflicting cruelty on crabs; I think that’s pretty straightforward,” said Watson.

“That’s why I used the network to put pressure on them … which is a world-wide network … I mean, they were overwhelmed by emails.”

Lorie Chortyk, spokesperson for the B. C. SPCA said that it was due to this public protest that the Prince Rupert chapter of the society decided to cancel the fundraiser.

“We were just inundated with protests from the public, real concerns about the event, so in the end our view was if the public felt that strongly, holding that fundraiser wouldn’t be helpful for the Prince Rupert branch,” she said.

“I mean they were getting people calling up, threatening to blow their shelter and it just became a very emotional and almost dangerous situation, so we felt that really we needed to take this seriously.”

Watson, who co-founded Green Peace and who now works with the activist group Sea Shepard, based out of Washington State, feels that he played no role in the threats the SPCA received.

“I can’t control what people do,” he said.

“It has nothing to do with me.

“How would I be responsible for people making criminal allegations that’s ridiculous?

“The network goes out to 18,000 people; you’re not responsible for the actions of any of those people.”

Watson won’t call himself the network’s leader.

“Certainly I put out an email initially but I certainly didn’t call out for a bomb threat to the SPCA, that’s absolutely nuts. I said that people should protest,” said Watson.

Watson believes that crabs feel a tremendous amount of pain when they are thrown into a pot of boiling water to cook.

“You put an animal into boiling water – it’s cruel,” he said.

“Crabs have nervous systems, the scientific evidence is certainly clear on that.

“You know, you throw a crab into a pot of boiling water, it’s going to struggle and thrash and try to get out of it and you have to have some sort of pain receptors in order to have that kind of reaction.

To anybody who challenges him as to whether or not crabs feel pain when boiled, Watson says: “As a man I understand that child birth is painful, I have no reason to believe that, other than that’s the evidence that’s been presented to me. I can’t experience that pain and know it to be true.”

He has the same faith about the crab’s pain.

Chortyk, meanwhile says the incident has caused the SPCA to consider new issues.

“We don’t’ usually deal with crustaceans, it’s not something that comes up, but certainly we have had people call up and say they don’t like seeing live lobsters in their grocery store … we’ve actually been trying to do more and more of our own research trying to get some facts on the issue,” said Chortyk.

“I think that now the jury’s out on this and we just wanted to make sure we erred on the side of not doing anything that might harm animals, that’s why we cancelled the fundraiser.

As much as we do respect the rights of people who would protest things like this, it’s helpful if we can also have alternative support, because we don’t want other animals to suffer because we’ve cancelled fundraisers.

“It’s probably the same people that were so adamant about the crabs that would support the animals that do need help from local fundraising. But we did feel that if there was an issue here we had to err on the side of doing what was in the best interest of all animals,” said Chortyk.




EDITORIAL
People with a beef with the SPCA should fill the void
The Daily News
Friday, August 18, 2006
Page 4

A group of well-meaning but misguided protestors have cost the Prince Rupert SPCA many hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in unrealized fundraising and if anyone ends up hurt after the spat that broke out over the crab feast fundraiser, it will be the shelter animals.

The protestors who complained about the SPCA’s proposed crab cook-up meant well when they said it was cruel and not the sort of thing an anti-cruelty organization should be doing.

The trouble is, they are wrong.

True, the concept of boiling crabs in order to raise money so that other animals can be spared from cruelty is easy to criticize. However, the practice of boiling crabs alive before you eat them is the normal way to prepare the crustacean.

Presumably, those complaining about the fundraiser would have preferred it if the crabs were sedated first, or maybe blindfolded and player some soothing music.

The fact is, though, that not how crabs are made ready for the table.

By demanding that the SPCA commits to higher standards than the societal norm, the protesters are being unfair.

Basically, we humans accept that boiling crabs alive is the way to prepare them and therefore the acceptable, normal, way of killing them is not cruel, cruelty comes when the acceptable, normal way of doing something is exceeded.

Are the protesters saying that different rules should apply to the SPCA, or are they saying that no one should be boiling crabs alive? If that’s the case, then the standard of living in Prince Rupert could be in for a sharp fall if the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society gets its own way because there will be no crabbing industry.

By essentially shaming the SPCA into cancelling the event, the protesters from countries including New Zealand, South Africa and Britain have denied the Prince Rupert SPCA some much-need income, indeed, the crab feast fundraiser showed every sign of being the organization’s major annual fundraising event before the rug was pulled from under it.

The stupid thing in all this is that no crabs will be spared the pot. They will just be eaten in another place at another time, it’s not like they will be released back into the wild or put out to pasture in some crab retirement home.

It is now important for the Sea Shepherd organization to acknowledge the SPCA has done as it asked – no matter how unreasonable – and for those many thousands of protestors around the world who inundated the SPCA with emails of complaint, it’s time to put their hands in their pockets and sent he shelter money to reimburse the loss. After all, the SPCA wasn’t holding the crab feast because it wanted to boil crabs alive, it was doing it because it desperately needs the money. Without some help it’s difficult to imagine how the local shelter will be able to assist all those domestic animals in our community that are suffering real cruelty, let alone save the ones that humans have for millennia harvested for the table.

-Earle Gale, The Daily News