Let’s face it. There isn’t much we do to lobsters that wouldn’t be considered cruel. We throw them in vats of boiling water while still alive. We cover them up with seaweed and bake them while they’re still alive. Or if we’re squeamish about that, we use a wooden or metal skewer, inserted under the tail fan up through the whole body of the poor thing.

And that’s the “humane” method — if you do it right and don’t inadvertantly cause greater pain to the creature.

But killing food animals isn’t something most consumers usually do; that happens in slaughterhouses and onboard fishing boats before we have to deal with the reality of what eating fish or meat really means. We pick up most of our meat and fish already slaughtered, cut into convenient pieces, and wrapped in plastic.

Shellfish are the exception to the rule. Because we toss lobsters in the stewpot, or clams in the chowder or mussels in the paella, on a more or less regular basis, we may think of shellfish and crustaceans as something other than living animals, but of course they are.

So it seemed like a bit of a shock when People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals took video of what was going on at the Linda Bean Lobster processing plant up in Rockland, and posted it online last December. In the video, the animals were being dismembered alive.

An investigation revealed that Bean had broken no animal cruelty laws, since cruelty laws don’t apply to invertebrates, like lobsters and other shellfish.

According to PETA, a major purchaser of lobster products stopped using Bean lobsters after seeing that video. The company, Delaware North, provides concessions for major league sporting events, hotels, parks and airports nationwide, so it is a pretty big deal.

Delaware North wouldn’t say why they stopped using Bean lobsters. The decision appears to have been made after June 20, when PETA contacted them about the methods used at the plant, and July 1, when the company told PETA it had stopped buying lobster products from Bean.

Linda Bean said that what PETA is doing is an attack on Maine’s most valuable fishery.

“What we have been witnessing for months is a truly radicalized organization, PETA, launching a campaign in Maine,” Bean said. “Many here in Maine are seeing it as a full-scale attack on the lobster industry.”

She maintained that her plant in Rockland processes lobsters virtually the same way as most other plants in Maine and Canada.

“Contrary to PETA’s allegations, we do not violate any animal cruelty statutes. That was affirmed by the Knox County District Attorney’s Office by its rejection of the baseless complaint filed there by PETA,” Bean continued.

If the video is the reason Delaware North cut ties with Bean, it would be an example of market forces moving food production toward what is perceived to be a more humane method of dispatching animals. PETA will certainly see it that way, and will use this “success” to target other buyers of Bean lobsters.

But let’s be real here. Regardless of how food animals come to be on our plates, they meet an end they’d probably not wish to meet. We may choose to eat them anyway, but it seems absurd to single out one method of dispatching them as “cruel” when all methods result in the same end for the animal.