PETA Goes Fishing for Federal Lighthouses

The General Services Administration has a program under which it transfers lighthouses owned by the federal government to other governmental organizations and nonprofits, if they agree to take care of the properties. Now the group People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to take GSA up on its offer. The organization is interested in taking over a bunch of different lighthouses.

But what it seeks to do with them may give GSA pause. PETA wants to use the lighthouses as headquarters for its Fish Empathy Project, which, the group says, "aims to inform people that fish are intelligent, intriguing animals who feel pain just as all animals do and that they don't deserve to be violently killed for food, painfully hooked for 'sport,' or cruelly confined to aquariums."

In a letter to GSA, PETA says it would like to renovate the Cleveland East Ledge Light in Buzzards Bay, Mass., and stock it with interactive educational displays; an exhibit of a 300-square-foot "fish empathy quilt," and a café serving faux fish sticks and other vegan "seafood."