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.
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