shark fin soup 1

Background info here:
"ego, pride, exhibitionism, hubris..." a strong case for retrospective abortion.com

As always, never accept my word for it: Google is your friend.

The increasing demand for shark fin soup during an accelerating global food crisis serves, in many ways, to encapsulate the intellectual vacuum manifest between the tokenistic 'sustainability mantra' and a less-than-smug reality.
To supply the decadent demand for a bland and occasionally toxic product, whole dorsal fins are cut from live sharks before the animals are dumped back into the ocean to die slowly or to be torn apart by their cousins.

Now, I'm no fan of Japanese whaling 'research'. Everyone knows this 'research' nothing but a Big Lie.
Governments and diplomats would do well to call Japan's bluff, literally, by 'shirtfronting' the lying, hypocritical bastards and giving them a few smacks for fibbing.
In mitigation, however, at least the whales aren't being mutilated and thrown away. The entire whale is the product, not a tiny piece of it. It's killed; it's used.
Although the jury's still out, whale harvesting may even prove to be sustainable.

Given these two parallel realities, why do people get all warm, fuzzy and concerned about the latter but not the former?
Why are there quotas for whales and not for sharks?
How many sharks are being butchered alive for every whale killed and eaten?
How many tens of millions of dollars, tens of thousands of litres of fuel, thousands of hours of human resources, are invested in the annual Greenpeace Anti-Whaling stunt?*

Is it possible these resources might be invested more wisely?
Perhaps in one of dozens of third-world countries where people are literally starving?
Hmmm, the lying-hypocritical-bastard syndrome is catching on!

Boycott shark fin soup. Boycott restaurants that serve it. Boycott people who eat it.

*In the interests of balance re Greenpeace activities:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominionpost/4495790a6031.html
(But who died and annointed them cops?! If I wanted another pack of interventionist bully-boys I'd become a US citizen.)