As an adolescent and young adult I dreamed of visiting China. I’ve always held a deep interest in the people, their history and culture. I got my first chance about 20 years ago, just months before the historic events at Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. I made meticulous preparations for the trip, learning several phrases in Chinese and trying to get the sequencing of the various Dynasties straight.
Although it’s sometimes not easy to do, when traveling I always try to experience the culture of others while staying true to my own values and ethics. But one thing concerned me about my upcoming trip to China: what would I eat?
A budding animal advocate in the late 1980s, I had already learned that just about any kind of animal imaginable – wild or domestic, and including cats and dogs – often ended up on the table in China. While I didn’t know the specifics at the time, I was aware that animal welfare was a little known concept in China, and the treatment of food animals unregulated. Today, I know that a large majority of the animals killed for food in China are slaughtered by inhumane methods, something the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA) is working with Chinese officials to change. (Look for a future post on how to find humanely raised animal foods while traveling.)
My China trip was memorable. The country was just beginning to embrace capitalism and open up to Western visitors; we experienced a China that no longer exists, not in the cities at least. And I made it through to the last night’s banquet feeling that I had managed to navigate the food situation successfully. I politely passed on the suckling pig and similar dishes, but when offered shark fin soup, I ate it. The soup might not even have shark in it, I figured, and if it did, the fin was probably obtained as a by-product of conventional fishing, or so my thinking went.
It was some years later before I learned of my mistake and the cruel realities of the dish. Although I can’t be sure how the shark fin I ate had been gotten, today, most comes from a process that involves hauling sharks onboard a fishing vessel, cutting off the fins and then throwing the still-living animals back into the water. Finless, the sharks sink to the ocean floor to die a slow and painful death (yes, fish do feel pain). Nearly 100 million sharks are killed for shark fin soup every year, causing great suffering and risking the future of the species, as portrayed in CNN’s Planet in Peril: Battle Lines documentary.
In 2000 the U.S. Congress passed the Shark Finning Prohibition Act, but the law contains loopholes that allow fishing vessels to transport fins that were obtained illegally as long as the sharks were not finned aboard the vessel. Senator John Kerry (D-MA) has introduced the Shark Conservation Act of 2009 (S. 850) to make possession of the fin of a shark onboard a fishing vessel illegal unless it is naturally attached to the corresponding shark carcass.
WSPA enthusiastically supports S. 850 and urges others to join us in ending an incredibly cruel practice.
Want to do more? Never order shark fin soup, wherever you might be in the world, and politely complain to restaurant management if you see it on the menu.
