Twilight star Kellan Lutz is fighting for the rights of crabs and lobsters after watching a Peta video featuring employees at a top Maine factory farm ripping the crustaceans apart, while they're still alive.

The actor has sent a letter to the owner of Linda Bean's Maine Lobster, urging her to "stop the most egregious acts of cruelty to animals" at her Rockland slaughterhouse.

The video features footage of crabs and lobsters being dumped, still alive, into boiling water, while others are tossed in the trash to die slowly and painfully.

A spokesman for Peta (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) tells Wenn, "There are other readily available slaughter methods, such as electrical stunning, which would render them unconscious before they're dismembered."

In his letter to Linda Bean, Lutz, who reveals he is not a vegetarian, writes, "Even if you can't relate to lobsters and crabs in the same way that you might to dogs or dolphins, they also deserve to be spared unnecessary agony."

He explains the footage in the video "turned my stomach", adding, "I recognize cruelty when I see it".

He also writes, "Watching these animals writhe as their exposed internal organs were violently scrubbed off with spinning brushes made me wonder how you could possibly wait one second longer to spend a little of your profits on a machine that renders these animals unconscious prior to being processed.

"I respectfully and urgently appeal to you to make an immediate decision to end the dismemberment and mutilation of live, conscious crustaceans and switch to a slaughter method that ensures a quick and far less painful death, such as electrical stunning or pressure."