PETA’s pique

During the past few years, PETA — People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — and the Maine Lobster Festival have forged an unusual relationship. The more the animal rights group strives to convince a hungry public that lobsters are splendid human beings not to be eaten, the hungrier the public becomes, packing the Rockland event in record numbers, loosening the collective belt and chowing down. Synergy, Bizzaro World style.

PETA certainly has made a nuisance of itself, but that’s irrelevant in a nation based largely upon protecting the rights of nuisances. PETA can leaflet the region with celebrity scoldings and clog the festival midway with street theater to its heart’s content. It can, despite solid scientific evidence that the average lobster has the central nervous system of the average brick, feel free to portray lobsters as loving parents, devoted spouses and regular church-goers. There is no law against absurd anthropomorphism.

What PETA cannot do is what it tried to do this week — float unfounded allegations of unlawful conduct.

It seems PETA engaged an airplane to tow an anti-boiling banner over the festival during Wednesday’s opening. The airplane, for whatever reason, was late and missed out. PETA then pitched the story that its hired pilot was denied landing privileges at repercussion-fearing Maine airports, necessitating a take-off from New Hampshire; hence the tardiness. PETA was unable to specify which airports, although it did point one rather nebulous finger Rockland’s way, implicating Knox County Regional, in neighboring Owls Head.

Since Knox County Regional receives funding from the Federal Aviation Administration, such arbitrary denial of service is illegal. It also is highly improbable. Airport Manager Greg Grotton tells a different story: The pilot called to inquire about the facility; Grotton rolled out the welcome mat, going so far as to describe two grass runways that would be available should the regular runways be too busy to accommodate a banner-towing operation; Grotton never heard from the pilot again. If PETA pursues this matter with a formal complaint, as it says it may, the FAA then will be in the uncomfortable position of having to decide whether to believe a publicity seeking activist group or a dead-serious professional airport manager who knows the law.

This is shameful and a shame — PETA has done some very good work. It brought senseless torture of animals by the cosmetics industry to the public’s attention and got many cosmetics manufacturers to change their ways. It initiated needed reforms in the way animals are used in scientific research. It has been instrumental in making zoos, aquariums and other wildlife parks more humane places.

So it’s puzzling why PETA chooses to squander the good reputation it has earned on the silliness of trying to make lobsters into something they’re not, but PETA is entitled to be silly. It is not entitled to accuse public officials in charge of public facilities of unlawful conduct. PETA must either back up its airport story or retract it. And then pass the butter.