A restaurant in Singapore yesterday suspended a bizarre promotional stunt in which customers use an arcade-style machine with a mechanical claw to catch live crabs after it sparked uproar online.
A video of the pink machine, containing the creatures and emblazoned with a picture of a smiling red crab under the phrase “Come and catch me,” went viral after being posted this week.
Similar to machines in which people pick up soft toys, the game sees customers pay S$5 (US$3.67) to use a joystick to move the claw over the creatures before lowering it to try and grab one.
Photo: AFP
If successful, the customer can have the Sri Lankan crab cooked on the spot free of charge, choose to take it home or leave it at the House of Seafood restaurant to eat another time.
However, Internet users condemned the game as cruel after the specially produced video promoting it went up online.
“This is too much,” Joseph Soh wrote on Facebook. “Why are you making their remaining life even more difficult... Absolutely disgusting.”
The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals said that the machine “causes unnecessary harm to the animals and it also encourages people to see animals as nothing more than objects to play with.”
“Crabs are living creatures, not toys,” it added.
House of Seafood chief executive Francis Ng (黃泯萊) told reporters that the promotion, which began this month, had been suspended after the outcry, but added that he was surprised at the reaction.
“People think I torture them, but we don’t have any intention of doing that,” he said. “The crabs are not being hurt.”
The machine’s claw is covered with plastic and the area inside is cushioned to prevent the creatures from being injured if dropped, he said.
A similar promotion at two restaurants he operates in China was a success, Ng said, adding that he plans to meet with Singaporean authorities and would cease using the machine permanently if ordered.
DITCH TACTICS: Kenyan officers were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch suspected to have been deliberately dug by Haitian gang members A Kenyan policeman deployed in Haiti has gone missing after violent gangs attacked a group of officers on a rescue mission, a UN-backed multinational security mission said in a statement yesterday. The Kenyan officers on Tuesday were on their way to rescue Haitian police stuck in a ditch “suspected to have been deliberately dug by gangs,” the statement said, adding that “specialized teams have been deployed” to search for the missing officer. Local media outlets in Haiti reported that the officer had been killed and videos of a lifeless man clothed in Kenyan uniform were shared on social media. Gang violence has left
US Vice President J.D. Vance on Friday accused Denmark of not having done enough to protect Greenland, when he visited the strategically placed and resource-rich Danish territory coveted by US President Donald Trump. Vance made his comment during a trip to the Pituffik Space Base in northwestern Greenland, a visit viewed by Copenhagen and Nuuk as a provocation. “Our message to Denmark is very simple: You have not done a good job by the people of Greenland,” Vance told a news conference. “You have under-invested in the people of Greenland, and you have under-invested in the security architecture of this
A fire caused by a burst gas pipe yesterday spread to several homes and sent a fireball soaring into the sky outside Malaysia’s largest city, injuring more than 100 people. The towering inferno near a gas station in Putra Heights outside Kuala Lumpur was visible for kilometers and lasted for several hours. It happened during a public holiday as Muslims, who are the majority in Malaysia, celebrate the second day of Eid al-Fitr. National oil company Petronas said the fire started at one of its gas pipelines at 8:10am and the affected pipeline was later isolated. Disaster management officials said shutting the
Japan unveiled a plan on Thursday to evacuate around 120,000 residents and tourists from its southern islets near Taiwan within six days in the event of an “emergency”. The plan was put together as “the security situation surrounding our nation grows severe” and with an “emergency” in mind, the government’s crisis management office said. Exactly what that emergency might be was left unspecified in the plan but it envisages the evacuation of around 120,000 people in five Japanese islets close to Taiwan. China claims Taiwan as part of its territory and has stepped up military pressure in recent years, including
RSS