Toronto On Verge Of Banning Shark-Fin Soup. When Will Ontario Do The Same?

NAL shark fin soup,

A Commentary by Doug Draper

This should be an easy one to slap a ban on.

You wanna kill sharks?. Then let's get down to it and kill every last living shark! What is wrong with us as a human species?

You take a soup that can only be produced from cutting the fins off of one of more endangered species on this planet and throwing it back into the ocean to die a bloody, drowning death. Then you do the right thing that can be done! You ban a soup, called “shark-fin soup,” from being served here in Niagara or anywhere else in Ontario or Canada, or New York State, for that matter.

You outlaw this death brew with as much intensity as you outlaw opium or heroin. You pass laws that say you go to jail if you peddle a food that involves the possible extinction of one of this world’s oldest surviving species.

Fortunately, Glenn De Baeramaeker, a Toronto city councillor, has tabled a motion to ban shark-fin soup in his city that might actually get the support of enough councillors to get passed. That, in itself, would be a big blow to the shark fin trade in this country, given the size of the Chinese population in the Toronto area where this soup has been considered something of a traditional delight.

But even there, said De Baeramaeker in a CBC interview this June 13, a majority of Canadians of Chinese dissent in his city are willing to throw this tradition away to end the slaughter of one of the ocean’s most mysterious creatures. “This is not a cultural practice I want to continue to take part in,” Kristyne Wong-Tam, one of De Baeramaeker’s fellow Toronto city councillors told The Globe and Mail recently. She placed her name on a petition for a “fin-free Toronto.” Animal advocates in Niagara have picketed at least one restaurant in the Niagara Falls area during the past year that has continued to serve this soup. They have done so before a flow of tourists who look at them with bewilderment and probably don’t realize that what this is all about is catching sharks, sawing their fins off on deck, then throwing their live remains overboard to a certain death.

Councillors in Toronto deserve credit for pushing a ban on shark-fin soup. But where are other municipalities like Niagara, and most importantly, where is our provincial government?

There are whole states in the United States like California, that has a sizable Chinese-American population, that are in the process of banning shark-fin soup from any and all restaurant menus. Oregan is also moving toward a ban and the State of Hawaii has already done so.

It would be good and brave of our Ontario government, therefore, to show some respect for threatened life on our planet and impose a province-wide ban on the peddling of shark fins for soup or any other purposes. Hey Dalton, this one is a no brainer. Just do the right thing!

For more about the slaughter of sharks for soup, learn more about the award-winning film Sharkwater by Toronto documentary filmmaker Rob Stewart by visiting www.sharkwater.com.

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