The Debate Over Shark Fin Soup in the Lower Mainland

Written in December 2012, this paper was to address an issue of rights occurring in British Columbia’s Lower Mainland.

In-text citations have been removed to ease readability.

In October 2012, during a conference in Richmond, Member of Parliament Alice Wong caused a furor amongst Canadians by eating shark fin soup. During the event, to which only Chinese-speaking media were invited, Wong spoke about her support of the soup. Though the consumption of shark fin soup is a Chinese tradition centuries of years old, the practice has been condemned in recent years for being the reason behind the torture and killing of tens of millions of sharks every year. During the last four months of 2012, a debate concerning a shark fin soup ban was raging on in the Lower Mainland. Reading about this debate sparked me to explore and write about the history of the soup, the various issues surrounding it, and what can be done to eliminate the conflict from Canada.

Background

History
Shark fin soup has been around for centuries, as discovered in writings from the Ming Dynasty of China, a period that lasted from the 1300s to 1600s. During this time, Chinese emperors and wealthy noblemen wished to find exotic and precious foods that would benefit human health because they wanted to have a dish fit only for the wealthy. During this quest, shark fin was discovered. This pleased the nobles for they felt the food was special since only a little part of a large fish would be used for the soup. Shark fin soup then became one of the eight treasured seafoods of China. During the following dynasty, known as the Qing Dynasty, which lasted until the 1900s, officers from coastal areas would give shark fin soup to emperors upon the officers’ visits to the imperial court. It was also during this time that the tradition of serving shark fin soup during formal banquets had begun. This tradition is still in practice today.

Culture
Nowadays, the soup is part of a tradition among the ethnic groups of China, though it has spread to many countries across world as a result of Chinese travel. Hong Kong and Singapore constantly dominate the shark fin soup market, while major producers, such as India, Indonesia, Japan, and the United States, almost totally export shark products to the two places.

Shark fin soup is eaten most during October to February, when many weddings and parties occur. The Chinese New Year celebration, the peak of shark fin soup consumption, which occurs in either January or February, also adds to the demand during this time. However, July and August do not see much consumption because these respective months are thought of as inauspicious in the Chinese culture. Shark fin soup, after all, is considered a special dish worthy only of the wealthy and so is served most typically during celebrations.

Culinary Arts
What may make shark fin soup seem even more exceptional is the process to create such a dish. Scales and skin are first removed from the raw dorsal, pectoral, and caudal fins of various shark species. The fins are then trimmed into shape and bleached to a desired colour. Only after the fins are left to soak in chicken or pork broth for several days will the soup be cooked.

Canned, ready-to-eat shark fin soup is sold in Asian markets, but the soup is actually one of the most expensive dishes made from fish. A world record was set in 2005 by a London restaurant’s Buddha Jumps Over the Wall shark fin soup that was declared the world’s most expensive soup, having cost £108 at the time. However, the high prices of shark fin soup are due not only to the elaborate preparation of the dish, but also to its cultural value.

Issues and Implications

Cultural Issues
There are many reported beliefs associated with shark fins that make the soup valuable. A majority of these beliefs relate to health benefits. Supposedly, shark fins have properties that increase energy levels, skin quality, and sexual potency. Besides being beneficial to many parts of the body, the fins are sometimes believed to help one avoid heart disease, nourish blood, decrease cholesterol, and enhance one’s appetite. The more common belief, however, is that because sharks possess such strength, they never get sick and they do not die naturally. William Goh, Managing Director of Rabbit Brand Shark Fin, is one who believes this.

‘Researches’ on the matter were done by Dr. William I. Lane, who said that sharks hardly, if ever, get cancer, and concluded that eating parts of sharks will help people protect themselves from the disease. None of this is true. There really is no scientific basis for these beliefs. Sharks are by no means immortal and their fins are not beneficial to human health in any way. Shark fin soup, in fact, contains less nutrients than vegetable soup. Because the soup is most often made with monosodium glutamate (MSG), the soup also contains a high amount of sodium that should not be taken into excess. Moreover, eating too much shark fin soup can cause sterility in men, according to WildAid, and shark fins sometimes contain toxic mercury. The beliefs are just that: beliefs. Those who believe these things do not know this. Generation after generation, century after century, these beliefs have carried on because the myths were seldom challenged.

The main driver of the consumption of shark fin soup, however, is not cultural beliefs. The beliefs were more likely to stem from the real reason why people eat shark fin soup: the dish is a status symbol. Shark fin soup is most typically eaten only on special occasions, such as weddings or fancy dinners. Serving shark fin soup shows not only wealth, but also generosity. Giving it to guests is a way of showing honour and sincerity. The real value of shark fin soup comes from symbolism. Shark fins are tasteless; it is the soup itself that is tasted, not the fin. The fin does not add anything to the soup, says chef Gordon Ramsay. He also thinks that, the soup would taste better if shark fin was replaced with corn or duck. The only benefit of putting shark fin in a soup, he says, is its chewy texture. However, this texture can be replaced with abalone or even something as common and inexpensive as gelatin. In reality, so much value is given to something so meaningless.

Another problem associated with the consumption of shark fin soup is that the soup’s consumption is a cultural tradition. In the Chinese culture, eating shark fin soup is simply ‘the thing to do’. It is a well known activity and it happens regularly. Businesspeople expect the soup to be served during business dinners, while elders expect it at weddings, as if the soup is supposed to be served without question. Not serving the dish would be very peculiar. ‘If you don’t order that, you will lose face,’ says a Chinese banker . Cultural traditions, however, can be abandoned. Some Chinese have stopped serving shark fin soup because of their concerns about the environment and ethics, which shall be explained below.

But the preservation of shark fin soup, as well as any other cultural tradition, is protected by cultural rights. Cultural rights, guaranteed by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, allow people to be a part of culture — a scope of beliefs and activities shared by a group of people. The United Nations introduced cultural rights to give even the people in the smallest villages the right to preserve their own language, beliefs, and traditions, rather than succumb to the dominant Western culture that dominates the world. These rights were then outlined in the International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Economic Rights in 1966 and put into effect the following year. Nationally and internationally, cultural rights are recognised.

However, treaties and governments stress the value of culture, rather than its issues. The limits of cultural rights are hardly spoken of, especially by governments, unless cultural traditions affect humans. For example, the practice of female gential mutilation (FGM) was banned — as it should be — in a number of countries, such as Canada, and listed as a crime in the Criminal Code of Canada because of its negative effects on society.

Preserving shark fin soup encourages the acts of harming animals for cultural traditions, and allowing its preservation ultimately encourages whaling. Killing sharks and killing whales are hardly different. Both acts connect to cultural traditions and both animals are endangered. Other cultural traditions that relate to the shark fin soup issue are the buying and carving of ivory, the use of tiger parts, and the hunting of eagles and bears. If nothing is done about any of these issues, the rest will continue to be practically unchallenged by the means of law. Perhaps, if the issue of shark fin soup can be dealt with, other issues dealing with a conflict between animal and cultural rights can follow its lead.

Environmental Issues
Unlike sweet and sour pork, Kung Pao chicken, and other Chinese dishes, shark fin soup has become a problem that society faces — and not because sharks are being killed for the soup. After all, pigs and chickens are harvested so we can eat many Chinese dishes. The issue rather is that the soup has caused many shark species to be threatened with extinction. Sharks have long lives and, therefore, mature rather slowly. Sharks can only reproduce after 25 years, and annually killing millions of them undoubtedly decreases their population. Studies indicated an estimated 26 to 73 million sharks are harvested annually for their fins — the annual median from 1996 to 2000 being 38 million. The United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation estimated a figure of of almost a quarter of the median. However, conservationists estimated a much higher figure. Rob Stewart, author, activist, and filmmaker of Sharkwater, reported 74 million killings and the Oceanic Defence reported 78 million. In any case, sharks are still being overfished.

One of the most overfished sharks are oceanic whitetips, which the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List classifies as vulnerable. The Ocean Conservation Group reports that whitetips had a 70% decrease in population in the 1990s, while another species, the endangered scalloped hammerheads, have suffered a population decline of 83% since the 1980s. But it is not only the scalloped hammerheads that are threatened. Approximately one-third of the 440 known shark species, including the basking, great white, and whale sharks, fall into this category. Killing these species for shark fin soup plays a significant role in how they got there.

For 450 million years, sharks have dominated the ocean and have survived five mass extinctions, such as the one that wiped out the dinosaurs. But in just these past centuries, we have turned them into prey who have to fight for survival. If we continue to kill sharks at this rate, they will be unable to recover from the decline in their population.

Harvesting shark species that are not endangered will hardly solve the problem since there is practically no way of knowing which sharks are killed and served. Any species of shark can end up in a bowl. The fishermen, distributors, and restaurantéers of the shark fin industry do not check and do not care if they sell or catch endangered shark species. British Columbia’s own David Chung, president of the B.C. Asian Restaurant and Cafe Association, admitted in the past that he did not know if the fins served in BC restaurants came from endangered shark species. In spite of this, Chung also refused to give samples of shark fins to the Vancouver Animal Defense League for DNA testing and said that the Lower Mainland does not have scientific data that indicates that shark fin soup is threatening endangered sharks.

More importantly, when using the longline fishing method — the technique of fishing by using a line, miles long, baited with hooks — fishers do not choose which species to kill. Anything can get killed by the long lines: other sharks, fish, and even turtles. There is no way of regulating shark harvesting, and it is for this reason that we are unsure how many sharks are killed.

When too many sharks are killed, as is happening now, the ecosystem changes. Putting sharks in soups affects us in more ways than we can think. We may eat shark fins now, but killing so many of them will ultimately be harmful to us. We rely on the ocean for our survival — the same habitat that sharks have controlled for hundreds of million of years. Wiping out these animals harms the ecosystem, since sharks ecologically function as apex predators. On top of the marine food chain, they are the kings of the ocean. Sharks influence the ocean’s community structure in a number of ways. For example, when the population of their prey is low, sharks can switch their diet. This maintains diversity in the ocean. Also, because of the lower communities’ fear of shark predation, animals lower down in the food web change the ways they act and use the habitat. This is happening in the waters of Western Australia, where dugongs feed on seagrass beds and coral reefs. The dugongs’ fear of becoming shark prey forces them to relocate and feed on plants elsewhere. In this way, sharks indirectly control the structure of plants and other bottom communities.

Sharks are responsible for managing healthy ecosystems, but if these top predators vanish, the lower levels of the food web will get affected and become uncontrollable. In the long run, we, as humans, also will not be able to live the way we do now. If the ecosystems of the ocean be damaged even more than they are right now, all life on Earth will continue to suffer because there is not any animal that can fulfill the responsibilities of sharks, nor replace them.

Economic Issues
The demand of shark fin soup is not only connected to social reasons, but also economic reasons. The amount of the soup’s consumption is connected to the vitality of the economy. The better the economy performs, the wealthier the people get, resulting in an increase of the middle-class who wish for a status symbol.

From the business perspective, shark fin soup is highly profitable way for restaurants, their suppliers, and fisheries to make money. The costly dish can be sold because there is a demand for it, especially if the economy is doing well. There are approximately thirty restaurants in British Columbia that sell shark fin soup, twenty-two of which are located in Vancouver. These restaurants back their dish, saying that there is not a law that says they cannot sell shark fin soup unless a ban is placed.

Even though fisheries are currently profiting from shark trade and finning, they will ultimately collapse. As a result of the negative change the oceans are facing today, such as the overfishing and endangering of marine wildlife, fisheries are predicted to crash by 2048. Sharks play a role in this as the rulers of the waters who control the ecosystem. Because the demand for sharks leads to their endangering, all other fish are now lacking the stability for survival. When the collapse of fisheries occurs, seafood will disappear, which will bring down seafood restaurants and cause the economy to stumble.

Population Growth
The problem with fisheries even worsens when considering the population growth of the world, or more specifically, of China. In the 1950s, 565 million people lived in China. There are now 1.3 billion people living in the country, making it by far the most populous nation in the world. An increasing population coupled with the decline of the shark population will result in even larger issues. The demand for shark fin soup will definitely increase if the outlook of the population does not dramatically change.

An increasing demand will result in the annihilation of sharks, which will, as explained above, greatly change the ecosystem, collapse fisheries, and alter our human life.

Ethical Issues
The reasons people value and consume shark fin soup are evidently controversial. The right to believe and practise traditions in this case should not be upheld because there is no validation to the reasons. We may condemn the practice and label it wrong, but to think it is right to have a shark killed, whether or not it is of an endangered species, so that guests will feel appreciated is a morally wrong opinion. It is equivalent to thinking that serial killing is the correct way to please a friend. In truth, so many other things can be done to show appreciation to guests. Having a shark killed to show appreciation should not be one of them. Perhaps the most grotesque thing of all, is that people continue to demand the soup, even though the public knows sharks are endangered and is aware of shark finning.

Shark finning is one way fishermen obtain shark fins. To obtain shark fins, sharks must of course be killed. The legal process of harvesting sharks involves killing them and bringing their whole bodies to ports. Only then can the fins be cut off. Although it is illegal to land a shark fin separate from the body of a shark, this happens all too often. Most times in this case, shark finning occurs. Shark finning is the method of catching a shark, slicing off its tails and fins while it is still alive, then throwing it back into the ocean. Without fins or a tail, a shark is unable to swim and, therefore, left with no means of survival. It will starve to death, be eaten alive by other fish, or drown because its gills will not be able to absorb oxygen from the water. In any case, it can only wait for death. Unfortunately, shark finning cannot be regulated, since there is no organisation or government that can keep track of all activities of shark finning in the middle of oceans. Although we are aware about the process, we do not know how many sharks have been lost as a result of it, which is why the number of sharks killed per year varies from 38 million to 100 million.

Whatever the number may be, the act of driving out entire species to the brink of extinction is unethical. Some of the Chinese community think that the banning of shark fin soup is discriminatory. Kerry Jang, Director of the Greater Vancouver Regional District Board and Member of the Vancouver City Council, who is also of Chinese descent, does not agree. ‘People are trying to wrap the issue in the flag of China,’ he says. The shark fin soup issue is not an attack against the Chinese race. No one decided to discourage shark fin soup because the dish came from China. Rather, the soup and the finning and endangering of sharks are all ethical concerns that affect every human and every life on Earth — not just the Chinese.

Responsibility

International Agreements
One may ask how sharks are being protected. The truth is that they are not. Unlike land animals that live in countries, sharks live in oceans, which do not belong to any nation. Because oceans are of international waters, they are unable to be easily, if at all, protected. Oceans are not watched over, and the United Nations has not brought up any rulings of the conservation of deep seas. The most that governments have done to protect marine animals is place the 1986 moratorium on whaling, which was the result of public pressure. This suggests the incompetence of governments worldwide. Governments do not want to address these issues. Only when the ordinary people cause an uproar will they care — and even then, perhaps not much. The overfishing of sharks has led to a bigger decline of population in terms of percentage than that of whales. Yet, nothing is being done to protect sharks.

If governments continue to ignore sharks, even though their suffering has already been acknowledged, sharks will keep dying out. Without the care of those in power or any written agreement for protection, the animals will vanish completely.

Canadian Governmental Responsibility
Several municipal governments in Canada have acknowledged the issues concerning shark fin soup. Toronto, Mississauga, and other Ontarian cities were the first to ban the soup. Langley City, North Vancouver, White Rock, Port Moody, Coquitlam, Nanaimo, and Abbotsford in British Columbia have followed. At the moment, Vancouver, Richmond, and Burnaby are working together to ban the soup simultaneously, an act that encouraged Surrey and New Westminster to look into the issue as well. Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang, who has been campaigning for over six years against shark fin soup, says it is vital that all three cities simultaneously ban the soup, which take effect in early 2013 if approved by all city councils. Jang stressed how important it was to ban shark fin soup in multiple cities at the same time, announcing in an interview with CBC, ‘We wanted to make sure that if we banned it in Vancouver, for example, then people didn’t go to Richmond, or if Richmond banned it, they would just come back to Vancouver.’ The idea is that many municipal bans will encourage a province-wide ban. Perhaps after that the federal government will be willing to bring up the issue for the whole of Canada.

However, that is not to say there are not any issues in creating municipal bans. Those against the bans defend their position with the law. Richmond MP Alice Wong, who thinks that even the federal government should not meddle with the debate, stated that because there is ‘no basis’ for banning a legally imported good from a legal source, David Chung has every right to preserve the soup in BC restaurants. In Burnaby, restaurants like the Fortune House Seafood Restaurant in Burnaby, as well as the city’s mayor, Derek Corrigan, agree with Chung, who believes the debate over shark fin soup should be passed on to the federal government because municipalities have no right to introduce bans. The Ontario Superior Court of Justice seemed to think so as well, since they decided to outlaw Toronto’s shark fin soup ban in late 2012, declaring that the ban fell beyond the jurisdiction of the city. The city councillors who introduced the bylaw then fought for an appeal of the ruling.

For being such a huge concern, it is a wonder why the Canadian federal government has failed to take action against the issues surrounding shark fin soup. Almost nothing is being done by the federal government to protect sharks from getting finned and fished, even though the government certainly has the means to with the Species At Risk Act (SARA). With SARA, the government has the power to officially list threatened species and protect their habitat to help the species recover, especially if they would conform with Article 32 of SARA:

32. (1) No person shall kill, harm, harass, capture or take an individual of a wildlife species that is listed as an extirpated species, an endangered species or a threatened species.

(2) No person shall possess, collect, buy, sell or trade an individual of a wildlife species that is listed as an extirpated species, an endangered species or a threatened species, or any part or derivative of such an individual.

By continuing to legalise the importation and fishing of sharks while SARA has been in effect already for ten years, the government demonstrates themselves that they cannot comply with their own legislation. When they enacted SARA, the government promised to protect the endangered. But for over a decade they have failed to fulfill this promise. The truth about shark fin soup did not rise yesterday, a month before, or even a year ago. If we already acknowledged that that shark finning cannot be regulated, that continuing the tradition will destroy the environment, and that there are not any benefits for preserving shark fin soup, why can there not be a ban on importing and fishing sharks, just as there is a moratorium on whaling?

Moreover, in spite of the government’s power to protect the endangered, recommendations for protection from the Committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada (COSEWIC), an independent science advisory body, have been denied for political reasons. The porbeagle shark, for example, has suffered a 90% decline in population, but was denied protection by the federal government because the fishing industry would be affected by its protection. This is demonstrates the problem we face when relying on the federal government to protect endangered species. They prioritise politics and the economy in the short-run instead of animal protection and long-term economic and environmental issues.

Nationwide bans would take years to be introduced, but with the way the government is addressing the issue — that is, the way they are not — it seems unlikely that a debate will ever be brought up. Unless the federal government can convince municipalities and the people that they are not as incompetent as the municipalities and people think they are in dealing with the shark fin soup issue, why should the city bans be looked down upon? Undoubtedly, a federal ban would be more effective than city-wide bans, but there is no reason why a collection of municipal bans should not be introduced. Toronto’s only issue is that Ontario does not think that its city is allowed to ban shark fin soup because the federal government is the only party that has the power to do so. What they fail to recognise is that Toronto and other cities in Ontario, Alberta, and British Columbia are banning, or looking towards banning, shark fin soup only because not enough is being done about it provincially or federally. These cities are doing something. They are rebelling against shark fin soup and the legality of shark fishing and importation; they have acted themselves and are doing what they can to fix an issue that would not otherwise be touched. Starting small is better than giving excuses that responsibility lies elsewhere. It is true the federal government is responsible, but they are not the only ones who are. The responsibility of taking action against the preservation of shark fin soup lies in every human.

Morality versus Legality
Shark fin soup does not belong in Canada because it does not conform with Canadian values. The values of Canadians do not include driving species into extinction, harming the environment, profiting from the inhumane torture of animals, or allowing any these actions to continue just to feel wealthy. In Canada, do we not value and care for our environment and our fellow Canadian friends, the animals? Certainly, we do. We care to improve our country so that future generations will live well in it. We put in our efforts to right our wrongs in order to achieve justice. Canadians must accept this duty.

Nevertheless, shark fin soup, shark trade, and shark fishing are all legal in Canada, despite their contradictions to the Species At Risk Act. Since its enactment in 2002, SARA has been ignored. Moreover, the consumption of shark fin soup is defended by the cultural rights Canada promised by ratifying the Charter of Rights and Freedoms and the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the International Covenant on Social, Cultural, and Economic Rights.

The contradictions between Canadian values and the outlined rights and laws have erupted in a battle between legality and morality. Disputes have occurred and communities have split. Restaurateurs defend their rights and view attacks as discrimination, while the opposers of shark fin soup point out the many issues that the soup has brought about. Vancouver city councillor Kerry Jang and Calgary Alderman John Mur have both been labelled ‘bananas’ — a racial slur referring to the fruit’s white flesh in a yellow peel — for of their efforts to ban shark fin soup.

In a way, both sides are right. The defenders of shark fin soup are legally right because the Canadian federal government allows the preservation of culture and has not spoken against shark fin soup, even though the enactment of SARA was theoretically powerful enough to protect sharks, shark trade, fishing, and consumption — all of which are still legal. In general, the right to culture is not a harmful idea, but all the issues associated with shark fin soup question the morality of the tradition. This is where the defenders of shark fin soup are wrong. It is not morally right to permit the existence of shark fin soup in this country or any else for that matter when it will only cause problems.

Conclusion

What we can do is spread awareness about the issue and boycott the restaurants that sell shark fin soup. People are unaware or apathetic about what is happening because the effects of endangering sharks cannot directly be felt or comprehended. Sharks live in the ocean and we do not think so much about them because we cannot see or be reminded of them. People are also less concerned when dealing with animal issues simply because they are humans and, therefore, considered superior to other animals. Despite this, it is because shark fin soup affects animals more than humans that the issue is even more important. Animals cannot communicate directly to us. Animals cannot say or do anything to fight our practices, nor can they speak up or protest cultural traditions that harm their health. This is why we, as humans, should make it our responsibility to look out and care for them. Spreading awareness will allow more people to understand how harmful the cultural tradition is and by doing this we can protect sharks. In the words of the United Nations,

‘Even though cultural practices may appear senseless or destructive from the standpoint of others, they have meaning and fulfil a function for those who practise them. However, culture is not static; it is in constant flux, adapting and reforming. People will change their behaviour when they understand the hazards and indignity of harmful practices and when they realise that it is possible to give up harmful practices without giving up meaningful aspects of their culture.’

By spreading awareness, we can also effectively pressure the government to ban the soup and the trading of sharks. Banning shark fin soup is not impossible. Harmful traditions have been outlawed before. Although shark fin soup has been eaten for some three to six hundred years ago, there have been much older traditions, such as female genital mutilation and foot binding, that have been banned because of the harmful effects of the practices. The shark fin soup case is similar to foot binding and FGM in this way, only it directly affects animals, rather than humans. Because of this, it outlawing the tradition is more difficult.

We should realise that animals should be given the right to be protected from harmful cultural practices. It is time we recognise the importance of animal rights and uphold them seriously. Once we do, we can criminalise the consumption, sell, and trade of shark fin soup, and, in turn, greatly decrease the number of sharks killed and the damage we inflict upon the environment.

If we continue to allow shark fin soup in Canada, we are accepting that sharks are being driven to extinction; we are letting the world get destroyed by our hands. If we do not do anything about this issue, we are letting others think that it is acceptable to kill other endangered animals for cultural values and traditions. Therefore, if we truly want the best for Canada, we can no longer allow the continuation of this harmful tradition; we can no longer allow Canada to suffer from the injustices that shark fin soup brings to the country.

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