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EAST campaigns
against ‘immoral’ shark fin soup
FIN-ALLY: Maestro A-fa said that he only learned
about the cruelty involved in the obtaining of shark fins after EAST
demonstrated how eco-unfriendly shark fin soup is
By Shelley Shan / Staff Reporter
Students wearing shark caps
attend a press conference in Taipei yesterday about a report by human rights
activists that as many as 40 million sharks have been slaughtered over the past
10 years to supply the demand for shark’s fin soup.
Photo: Lo Pei-der, Taipei Times
As many as 4 million sharks are
slaughtered each year to satisfy the nation’s taste for shark fin soup at
wedding banquets, animal rights activists said yesterday.
In a survey of 76 international hotels earlier this year, the Environmental and
Animal Society of Taiwan (EAST) found that 71 listed shark fin soup on the menu
for wedding banquets, among them the Grand Hotel, the Sheraton Taipei Hotel and
the Regent Taipei.
Another three said that while they would not voluntarily offer shark fin soup
because of the hotels’ environmental protection policy, they would provide the
course if customers made a specific request.
Two other hotels said they did not offer banquets serving Chinese food.
EAST director Chen Yu-min (陳玉敏) said that based on the quantity of shark fin
that is served at the 71 hotels in question, between 920,000 and 3.86 million
sharks may be killed each year.
In a presentation, Chen played a video clip showing how fishermen obtain shark
fins. After the fins were cut off from the bodies of sharks, which were still
alive, they were dumped back into the sea.
“Shark fin soup is a most immoral and eco-unfriendly dish, and it has no benefit
to human health at all,” Chen said, adding that society encouraged couples
planning to get married to specify that they did not want shark fin soup served
at their wedding banquets.
She also said that Taiwan should insist that fishermen who catch sharks bring
the entire carcass back to the harbor rather than dumping it into the ocean.
Chef Shih Chien-fa (施建發), also known as Maestro A-fa (阿發師), told the press
conference that shark fin required seasoning as it has no flavor.
Shih and other famous local chefs were invited by the Tourism Bureau to make
traditional Taiwanese banquet dishes for 1,000 people in Beijing in April.
Shih said he replaced shark fin with cultivated abalone in the traditional
banquet dish fotiaoqiang, a type of shark fin soup, adding that nobody
complained about the dish losing its original taste.
Shih said members of EAST had contacted him after they saw that shark fin soup
would be served in Beijing and it was only after they got in touch with him that
he came to understand the cruelty involved in obtaining shark fins.
Other than abalone, the shark fin can be replaced by any fish that contains
collagen, Shih said.
Iris Ho (何燕青), campaign manager at Humane Society International, said Palau had
turned its sea areas into protection zones for sharks and banned their
commercial hunting.
US President Barack Obama also signed the Shark Conservation Act in January
requiring that all vessels bring back to land caught sharks with their fins
attached.
“Taiwan should draft laws or related measures that better protect sharks,” Ho
said.
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