While they seem to do very little in the way of rescuing and finding homes for actual pets (at their shelter in Virginia, more than 80% of animals brought there were euthanized in 2014), PETA continues to make the news for their increasingly inventive ways to pester people about the rights of animals. The latest example comes to us from Maryland, where the organization decided to take some of the money they raise from contributions and rent a billboard with a cartoon of a crab saying, “I’m ME, not MEAT.”

Keep in mind that we’re talking about Maryland here. It’s the home of soft shell crab as one of their signature dishes. It’s also absolutely delicious. I went handline fishing for crabs there a few years back and a friend who grew up there cooked them up for us. It still makes me ravenous just thinking about it.

At any rate, one of the local crab shacks decided that this messaging war had to be answered and took out a billboard of their own. This one was far more on point. (CBS Baltimore)

Marylanders were going crabby over a PETA billboard in Baltimore that urged them to stop eating crabs, but Jimmy’s Seafood has fired back with their own billboard.

The billboard from Jimmy’s reads: “SteaMEd crabs. Here to stay. Get Famous.”

Jimmy’s has also taken on PETA on social media, changing the groups acronym to mean “People Eating Tasty Animal.”

“We had to stick up for ourselves, our industry was under attack and we weren’t going to take that lying down,” said owner John Minadakis.

One local reporter tweeted out a beautiful picture of the new billboard and its tasty message.

Just days after PETA put up billboard urging #Baltimore to stop eating crabs, @JimmysSeafood fires back with one of their own: “SteaMEd Crabs. Here to stay.” @wjz pic.twitter.com/AoQtRFWqPr

— Rick Ritter (@RickRitterWJZ) September 3, 2018

Jimmy’s Seafood, the crab shack responsible for the new billboard, also took to social media to get in a few jabs of their own. It’s our old favorite theme, People Eating Tasty Animals

🦀 Found some photos of @peta – People Eating Tasty Animals – and one 🐐, too! pic.twitter.com/ME0auHQ6qT

— Jimmy’s Famous Seafood (@JimmysSeafood) August 25, 2018

One alert follower on Twitter noticed that PETA had tried using the same marketing scheme in Maine, only going after Lobsters. I was up there recently and I can assure you the lobster market is doing just fine.

They also thought it was a good idea to put up lobster ads in Maine. pic.twitter.com/PVDBbHrhpB

— Dalton (@AvgMarinersFan) August 27, 2018

It’s almost pointless to even bother responding to PETA’s nonsense these days, but I suppose someone has to do it. There are animals we keep for pets, animals we leave in the wild, and animals we eat. Crabs, lobsters and other crustaceans, along with fish and bivalves like clams and oysters fall into the latter category. I’m sure it’s no fun being dropped into boiling water, but it’s probably a lot quicker than some of the other methods used to prepare them. (On my aforementioned crab fishing trip, our host actually chopped the live crabs in half with a cleaver on a picnic table before throwing them into an electric fryer with hot oil and a ton of Old Bay seasoning. There was drawn butter in little cups and… now I’m getting hungry again.)

If you want to be a vegan, God bless you. Go for it. More crabs for the rest of us as I always say. But should you really be wasting the money you take in from your followers to try to convince people in Maryland not to eat crabs? You might as well try to ban cheese in France. Of course, since cheese isn’t really vegan I probably shouldn’t be giving you any ideas.

In case all of this is making you hungry, Jimmy’s ships their delectable seafood around the country. You can place an order on their website to show your support for their war on PETA if you so desire.