You'll find it at many Chinese weddings... it's a popular delicacy and a sign of wealth... shark's fin soup. The soup itself does not contain shark meat... only the shark's fin.... and can cost anywhere from $30 to $200 a bowl, depending on the quality of the fin.
Animal rights groups have long protested the means for collecting the fins... Shark finning is the practice of a catching shark, cutting off its fins, then throwing its body back into the ocean. Taiwan recently announced plans to ban shark finning by next year saying their focus is on consuming the entire animal, not just the fin.
James Sha, Director General of Taiwan Fisheries Agency: "Sharks are a part of the ecological environment. If we make use of sharks in a manner that is effective and reasonable, it can be beneficial not only to humans, but also to the ecological environment.
I hope that there can be an understanding that Taiwanese people do not only eat the shark fins, we also eat the shark meat and even its skin."Still, environmentalists say the measures don't go far enough to save the dwindling shark species.
Director of Gloal Shark Conservation for the Pew Environment Group, Matt Rand: "What Taiwan, in my opinion, really needs to do, it needs to stop catching sharks that are threatened or near threatened to extinction, and any other species that needs to have a precautionary limit on the numbers that can be caught, that ensured the survival of these species.
Right now a fins attached policy is far from actually ensuring the survival of sharks. It's not nearly enough." A chain of hotels in Hong Kong has also recently announced a ban on shark fin consumption, effective January 1, 2012. (Julie Noce/Reuters)
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