SKOWHEGAN — Hold the drawn butter, please.

A national animal rights group says it is cruel and unusual to boil and eat Maine lobster and they want to draw attention to the suffering of Maine’s trademark crustacean.

So, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) have an idea for the century-old Somerset County Jail — turn it into a “lobster empathy center”.

The county jail is up for sale, as the sheriff, staff and inmates prepare for a move to a new, modern facility in East Madison this summer.

“No building would be more appropriate than a jail to set up an interactive display about how these intriguing animals suffer when they are trapped off the coast of Maine and housed in filthy grocery-store tanks before they are boiled alive,” Lindsay Rajt, manager of PETA Vegan Campaigns writes in a June 2 letter to the Somerset County commissioners.