7 ms·

Canada becomes first G20 country to ban trade in shark fins

218 points by Ultramanoid 7y ago

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
Groxx 7y ago
>... Canada is the largest importer of shark fins outside of Asia. Wow, TIL. Thank goodness then, that's likely a substantial cut. Worth nothing tho that the USA, also a G20 country, has had arguably similar bans since either 2000 or 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_finning#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_finning#United_States
- weberc2 7y ago
  Thanks for sharing that wiki link. This paragraph was particularly interesting to me. > In 2010, Hawaii became the first state to ban the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins. The law became effective on 1 July 2011.[95] Similar laws have been enacted in the states of Washington,[96] Oregon,[97][98] California,[99] the territory of Guam[100] and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.[101] California governor Jerry Brown cited the cruelty of finning and potential threats to the environment and commercial fishing in signing the bill.[99] Opponents charged the ban was discriminatory against Chinese, the main consumers of shark fin soup, when federal laws already banned the practice of finning.
- throwmex 7y ago
  Why is there a market for shark fins in Canada to begin with ?
  - richjdsmith 7y ago
    Canada has a relatively large (~5%) Chinese and Chinese-Canadian population. A large immigration event happened during the 90s due to the uncertainty surrounding the UK handover of Hong Kong[1] and many resettled in Vancouver. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_immigration_to_Canada#Immigration_in_the_21st_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_immigration...
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    A long time back (i.e. when I was a kid, which was a long time back), you could get a visa to come to Canada if you invested a certain amount of money into a company and ran that company for a few years (2 was the minimum, I think). For relatively well off people in China this was a great opportunity and basically the default thing to do was to open a Chinese restaurant. Lots of these restaurants went under after the proprietors got permanent residence status, but a suprisingly large number of them stuck around. My good friend's father was one of those immigrants and he said that he had no interested at all in running a restaurant, but after doing it for a few years he found that he really enjoyed it. So historically there have been a lot of Chinese restaurants in Canada and a large population of Chinese Canadians. Over time, quite a few of these restaurants have gotten very good and the owners hire famous chefs from China to come over and cook in them (at one time that was a thing you could do... I'm not so sure any more). Because of this, famous Chinese dishes started to appear in the restaurants. Again, when I was a kid, most restaurants had 2 menus: one in Chinese and one in English. The English one had "Chinese Canadian" food like sweet and sour pork balls in neon red sauce, while the Chinese menu had actual Chinese cuisine. As Canadians became more aware of this, they started preferring the Chinese menu. By the time I was in University, everybody I knew wouldn't dream of ordering off the English menu (I grew up in Winnipeg, which had a very good set of Chinese restaurants at the time). Again, over time, Canadians started to appreciate fine Chinese cuisine. One of the dishes that is popular is shark fin soup. That's basically the long and the short of it as far as I can tell.
  - tenpies 7y ago
    The number of Chinese immigrants to Canada cannot be underestimated. There are whole cities where Chinese constitute more than 50% of the population [1]. --- [1] http://www.richmond-news.com/news/chinese-reach-majority-in-richmond-1.23081026 http://www.richmond-news.com/news/chinese-reach-majority-in-...
  - Mikeb85 7y ago
    Large Chinese population.
acd 7y ago
There is several species of shark which is critically endangered, many other are listed as vulnerable. Please try also and help conservation by consuming right, never eat shark fin soup. List of threatened sharks species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_threatened_sharks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_threatened_sharks
- dnhz 7y ago
  And I wonder how many sharks die simply as a result of being bycatch in regular commercial fishing. People could be guilty of indirectly killing sharks by eating fish like tuna. > Throughout the 1990s, fishermen captured 12 million sharks and rays as bycatch every year, just in international waters alone. https://usa.oceana.org/blog/bycatch-spotlight-one-biggest-issues-facing-sharks-today https://usa.oceana.org/blog/bycatch-spotlight-one-biggest-is... Even if some sort of release policy is implemented by fishermen, being hooked by the gills, dragged up to 1 atmosphere pressure, and being thrown back into the water is probably harmful to the sharks.
  - smackay 7y ago
    Agreed. However the trade in shark fins is very profitable and leads to excesses and unspeakable cruelty. Just search for "sharks cut off fins" in your favourite video site. Warning: the search results are graphic.
JensRantil 7y ago
> Canada becomes first G20 country to ban trade in shark fins I'm not a native English speaker and was expecting s/in/with since I read you are not allowed to use shark fins as transportation for trade.
- taejo 7y ago
  "trade in shark fins" is correct, "shark-fin trade" would be too; "trade with shark fins" would be weird. Compare the frequencies for a more common commodity: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=trade+in+wheat%2Ctrade+of+wheat%2Cwheat+trade%2Ctrade+with+wheat&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctrade%20in%20wheat%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ctrade%20of%20wheat%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cwheat%20trade%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=trade+in+wheat...
  - Doxin 7y ago
    "Trade with shark fins" sounds like you'd be using the shark fins as currency to me, that is to say grammatically correct but generally nonsensical.
Kaiyou 7y ago
I never really understood what looks to me like an obsession with preserving endangered species. Maybe it does have to do with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_(social_psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_(social_psychology)
- rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
  Maybe because we are responsible for pushing ~1 million species to go extinct https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/05/ipbes-un-biodiversity-report-warns-one-million-species-at-risk/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/05/ipbes.... We're slowly starting to realize that if we don't stop ASAP, we might trigger a collapse of biodiversity that will ruin the foundations of our "economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide".
  - Kaiyou 7y ago
    Who is "we"? I'm certain I had nothing to do with this.
- moose462 7y ago
  You must remember that it is only the popular species. I'm from Portugal and here sharks have another name and are eaten regularly under that name. If it was called shark (the Portuguese equivalent to shark) there would probably be a whole commotion about it.
  - k_sze 7y ago
    From a pragmatic/utilitarian point of view, eating whole sharks is maybe much less cruel and much less wasteful than eating shark fins. After all, you can only eat so many whole sharks.
  - 52-6F-62 7y ago
    Are they an endangered species? That is the point here. That and poaching them only for their fins.
netwanderer3 7y ago
Does shark fins actually have any real nutritional values or it's just pure myth? It doesn't really matter though, population of some shark species has decreased up to 80% in the last 50 years so this practice just has to stop.
- raverbashing 7y ago
  Well, it has "real nutritional value", in the sense it provides calories, and probably aminoacids but nothing out of the ordinary or with medical value I'd suggest looking into the geopolitical issues behind the promotion of "traditional Chinese medicine"
  - AFascistWorld 7y ago
    They love pangolins now.
    - TheRealPomax 7y ago
      Replace "now" with "too". They've been killing pangolins for countless decades.
  - helloindia 7y ago
    "Shark fin soup was a status symbol for wealthy and powerful Chinese, who would consider a family who couldn’t afford to serve shark fin soup at the wedding banquet a family not worth marrying their daughter into." https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/a-brief-history-of-shark-fin-soup/ https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/a-brief-histo...
modzu 7y ago
"it’s an important [step] and sends a signal to the world that this practice is wrong, has to be stopped, and Canada will not participate in the import of these fins anymore.” i don't get it. why can't they be fished sustainably like anything else? why is it wrong to eat a shark fin but ok to trawl fish, or to wear a jacket filled with down plucked from a goose? this just seems like propaganda. https://www.oceana.ca/en/blog/how-seafood-caught-look-fishing-gear-types-canada https://www.oceana.ca/en/blog/how-seafood-caught-look-fishin...
spookware 7y ago
This how you win elections now? Ban stuff?

218 points by Ultramanoid 7y ago

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

Groxx 7y ago

>... Canada is the largest importer of shark fins outside of Asia. Wow, TIL. Thank goodness then, that's likely a substantial cut. Worth nothing tho that the USA, also a G20 country, has had arguably similar bans since either 2000 or 2011: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_finning#United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_finning#United_States

weberc2 7y ago
Thanks for sharing that wiki link. This paragraph was particularly interesting to me. > In 2010, Hawaii became the first state to ban the possession, sale and distribution of shark fins. The law became effective on 1 July 2011.[95] Similar laws have been enacted in the states of Washington,[96] Oregon,[97][98] California,[99] the territory of Guam[100] and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands.[101] California governor Jerry Brown cited the cruelty of finning and potential threats to the environment and commercial fishing in signing the bill.[99] Opponents charged the ban was discriminatory against Chinese, the main consumers of shark fin soup, when federal laws already banned the practice of finning.
throwmex 7y ago
Why is there a market for shark fins in Canada to begin with ?
- richjdsmith 7y ago
  Canada has a relatively large (~5%) Chinese and Chinese-Canadian population. A large immigration event happened during the 90s due to the uncertainty surrounding the UK handover of Hong Kong[1] and many resettled in Vancouver. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_immigration_to_Canada#Immigration_in_the_21st_Century https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Chinese_immigration...
- mikekchar 7y ago
  A long time back (i.e. when I was a kid, which was a long time back), you could get a visa to come to Canada if you invested a certain amount of money into a company and ran that company for a few years (2 was the minimum, I think). For relatively well off people in China this was a great opportunity and basically the default thing to do was to open a Chinese restaurant. Lots of these restaurants went under after the proprietors got permanent residence status, but a suprisingly large number of them stuck around. My good friend's father was one of those immigrants and he said that he had no interested at all in running a restaurant, but after doing it for a few years he found that he really enjoyed it. So historically there have been a lot of Chinese restaurants in Canada and a large population of Chinese Canadians. Over time, quite a few of these restaurants have gotten very good and the owners hire famous chefs from China to come over and cook in them (at one time that was a thing you could do... I'm not so sure any more). Because of this, famous Chinese dishes started to appear in the restaurants. Again, when I was a kid, most restaurants had 2 menus: one in Chinese and one in English. The English one had "Chinese Canadian" food like sweet and sour pork balls in neon red sauce, while the Chinese menu had actual Chinese cuisine. As Canadians became more aware of this, they started preferring the Chinese menu. By the time I was in University, everybody I knew wouldn't dream of ordering off the English menu (I grew up in Winnipeg, which had a very good set of Chinese restaurants at the time). Again, over time, Canadians started to appreciate fine Chinese cuisine. One of the dishes that is popular is shark fin soup. That's basically the long and the short of it as far as I can tell.
- tenpies 7y ago
  The number of Chinese immigrants to Canada cannot be underestimated. There are whole cities where Chinese constitute more than 50% of the population [1]. --- [1] http://www.richmond-news.com/news/chinese-reach-majority-in-richmond-1.23081026 http://www.richmond-news.com/news/chinese-reach-majority-in-...
- Mikeb85 7y ago
  Large Chinese population.

acd 7y ago

There is several species of shark which is critically endangered, many other are listed as vulnerable. Please try also and help conservation by consuming right, never eat shark fin soup. List of threatened sharks species https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_threatened_sharks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_threatened_sharks

dnhz 7y ago
And I wonder how many sharks die simply as a result of being bycatch in regular commercial fishing. People could be guilty of indirectly killing sharks by eating fish like tuna. > Throughout the 1990s, fishermen captured 12 million sharks and rays as bycatch every year, just in international waters alone. https://usa.oceana.org/blog/bycatch-spotlight-one-biggest-issues-facing-sharks-today https://usa.oceana.org/blog/bycatch-spotlight-one-biggest-is... Even if some sort of release policy is implemented by fishermen, being hooked by the gills, dragged up to 1 atmosphere pressure, and being thrown back into the water is probably harmful to the sharks.
- smackay 7y ago
  Agreed. However the trade in shark fins is very profitable and leads to excesses and unspeakable cruelty. Just search for "sharks cut off fins" in your favourite video site. Warning: the search results are graphic.

JensRantil 7y ago

> Canada becomes first G20 country to ban trade in shark fins I'm not a native English speaker and was expecting s/in/with since I read you are not allowed to use shark fins as transportation for trade.

taejo 7y ago
"trade in shark fins" is correct, "shark-fin trade" would be too; "trade with shark fins" would be weird. Compare the frequencies for a more common commodity: https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=trade+in+wheat%2Ctrade+of+wheat%2Cwheat+trade%2Ctrade+with+wheat&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Ctrade%20in%20wheat%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Ctrade%20of%20wheat%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cwheat%20trade%3B%2Cc0 https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=trade+in+wheat...
- Doxin 7y ago
  "Trade with shark fins" sounds like you'd be using the shark fins as currency to me, that is to say grammatically correct but generally nonsensical.

Kaiyou 7y ago

I never really understood what looks to me like an obsession with preserving endangered species. Maybe it does have to do with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_(social_psychology) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scarcity_(social_psychology)

rcMgD2BwE72F 7y ago
Maybe because we are responsible for pushing ~1 million species to go extinct https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/05/ipbes-un-biodiversity-report-warns-one-million-species-at-risk/ https://www.nationalgeographic.com/environment/2019/05/ipbes.... We're slowly starting to realize that if we don't stop ASAP, we might trigger a collapse of biodiversity that will ruin the foundations of our "economies, livelihoods, food security, health, and quality of life worldwide".
- Kaiyou 7y ago
  Who is "we"? I'm certain I had nothing to do with this.
moose462 7y ago
You must remember that it is only the popular species. I'm from Portugal and here sharks have another name and are eaten regularly under that name. If it was called shark (the Portuguese equivalent to shark) there would probably be a whole commotion about it.
- k_sze 7y ago
  From a pragmatic/utilitarian point of view, eating whole sharks is maybe much less cruel and much less wasteful than eating shark fins. After all, you can only eat so many whole sharks.
- 52-6F-62 7y ago
  Are they an endangered species? That is the point here. That and poaching them only for their fins.

netwanderer3 7y ago

Does shark fins actually have any real nutritional values or it's just pure myth? It doesn't really matter though, population of some shark species has decreased up to 80% in the last 50 years so this practice just has to stop.

raverbashing 7y ago
Well, it has "real nutritional value", in the sense it provides calories, and probably aminoacids but nothing out of the ordinary or with medical value I'd suggest looking into the geopolitical issues behind the promotion of "traditional Chinese medicine"
- AFascistWorld 7y ago
  They love pangolins now.
  - TheRealPomax 7y ago
    Replace "now" with "too". They've been killing pangolins for countless decades.
- helloindia 7y ago
  "Shark fin soup was a status symbol for wealthy and powerful Chinese, who would consider a family who couldn’t afford to serve shark fin soup at the wedding banquet a family not worth marrying their daughter into." https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/a-brief-history-of-shark-fin-soup/ https://theculturetrip.com/asia/china/articles/a-brief-histo...

modzu 7y ago

"it’s an important [step] and sends a signal to the world that this practice is wrong, has to be stopped, and Canada will not participate in the import of these fins anymore.” i don't get it. why can't they be fished sustainably like anything else? why is it wrong to eat a shark fin but ok to trawl fish, or to wear a jacket filled with down plucked from a goose? this just seems like propaganda. https://www.oceana.ca/en/blog/how-seafood-caught-look-fishing-gear-types-canada https://www.oceana.ca/en/blog/how-seafood-caught-look-fishin...

spookware 7y ago

This how you win elections now? Ban stuff?