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[Ed]

How time changes things, anyone remember the mudshark derbies back in the day, I forgot now who sponsored it but let me tell you alot of boats came in loaded with dead fish. You should have seen the sea floor of horseshoe bay at the end of the derby. But I digress, after seeing how the fins are harvested, there has to be a better way. I blame the fish farms.

I hear some Cow slaughterhouses get pretty cruel and inhuman.... and cows are religious to the Hindu so maybe we should ban the consumption of beef?      Its pretty high in cholesterol anyways.. might as well eat more fish and chicken.

[liketofish]

Sandy, thanks for your points. Oh that debt stuff is just a humorous way of China fighting back unfair treatment. It is not meant to be literal. These political games are played by the highest level of governments from various countries, especially between Europe, USA, Japan & China. Who know what the gives and takes are in each negotiations. For example, USA needs China to calm down her little brother North Korea, so China told them not to bother her on the currency issue (that RMB currency value needs to be increased). Or that China would buy Airbus planes so that European Union wouldn't bother them on human rights issues etc. etc. Who knows if the Europeans or USA someday took the lead to force other countries to stop shark hunt (like they do for seals) while they still enjoy their reckless shrimp hawls or blue fin tuna hunts, China would say we need to call the loan on all the money you borrow from us, or that they start dumping Euro or US currency in protest. Haha. That will be fun. China isn't a push over any more like a 100 years ago when 8 major foreign powers plundered her and she could do nothing about.    Some of these political moves can be so subtle that it may not outrightly harm world's economy to harm China back. If China simply won't buy US Treasury bills, or some sovereign bonds, these respective governments will have to scramble to pay their own government employees including the politicians themselves.    The last I check, China's economy has now shifted more to internal market demands and enjoying 9% growth even at the current state of world economy. There are hundred of millions of growing middle class now in China. I was in HK a few weeks ago. There was a line up 3 blocks long in front of a LV bag store by Chinese tourists and it is not even Christmas or New Year yet.  Doesn't look like they are suffering like the rest of the world.

[liketofish]

I hear some Cow slaughterhouses get pretty cruel and inhuman.... and cows are religious to the Hindu so maybe we should ban the consumption of beef?      Its pretty high in cholesterol anyways.. might as well eat more fish and chicken.

The media cameras can do anything to make things look horrible in any place blood is spilled for food. May be some big shops can do the killing in humane way for some foods. But the cameras can just turn to those who don't comply and everything looks ugly. To expect poor fishermen who have very little means beyond basic subsistence to go for modern equipment (like electric shock setup or guns) to be able to do harvesting humanely is not realistic at all. How do the commercial gill netters of the world remove fish from the net? They will probably pull the whole fish back & forth to get loose from the net, tearing off gills etc even when the poor fish is still alive. Do you think they will bonk the fish humanely like us sport fishermen before they do the brutal thing to the fish? It will slow them down. Fat chance.

On the point of food preference, Chinese are known to eat the guts or animal parts that westerners dislike. So do we point the fingers at the West for wasting the guts, the organs, the head, the tail and only eat the meaty portion? And if they don't eat the other stuffs, then is that ground to make the attack that the West is wasteful and so should stop eating their favourite meats? Or as Ed points out, some ethnic or religious groups don't even eat certain animals. Should they push that to foreigners and ban them from eating steaks? I don't think a foreigner is denied from eating steaks in India. I have not heard that they ban steak import like they are doing in Toronto to stop Chinese from eating shark fin soup. That is a bit over-stretched and is unfair to the Toronto Chinese community.

[Rodney]

http://www.findonnelly.ca/sharkfinpetition

[Ed]

Sandy, thanks for your points. Oh that debt stuff is just a humorous way of China fighting back unfair treatment. It is not meant to be literal. These political games are played by the highest level of governments from various countries, especially between Europe, USA, Japan & China. Who know what the gives and takes are in each negotiations. For example, USA needs China to calm down her little brother North Korea, so China told them not to bother her on the currency issue (that RMB currency value needs to be increased). Or that China would buy Airbus planes so that European Union wouldn't bother them on human rights issues etc. etc. Who knows if the Europeans or USA someday took the lead to force other countries to stop shark hunt (like they do for seals) while they still enjoy their reckless shrimp hawls or blue fin tuna hunts, China would say we need to call the loan on all the money you borrow from us, or that they start dumping Euro or US currency in protest. Haha. That will be fun. China isn't a push over any more like a 100 years ago when 8 major foreign powers plundered her and she could do nothing about.    Some of these political moves can be so subtle that it may not outrightly harm world's economy to harm China back. If China simply won't buy US Treasury bills, or some sovereign bonds, these respective governments will have to scramble to pay their own government employees including the politicians themselves.    The last I check, China's economy has now shifted more to internal market demands and enjoying 9% growth even at the current state of world economy. There are hundred of millions of growing middle class now in China. I was in HK a few weeks ago. There was a line up 3 blocks long in front of a LV bag store by Chinese tourists and it is not even Christmas or New Year yet.  Doesn't look like they are suffering like the rest of the world.

I agree, I was in Shanghai during the expos and Beijing as well and honestly the shopping hasnt stopped at all during the recession. Recently, I've read news articles saying that China is losing money on exports to Europe due to the financial crisis so suppliers will start producing goods to meet the local demands. However like you said in your post, there are line ups in front of LV stores but if you go take a walk around Holt Renfrew in Vancouver most of the people shopping are also asian.

One of China's problem right now is that there are tons of rich people and there are even more (a lot more) poor people. Cities like Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai, and etc were developed to make China look advanced but if you travel to some of the many smaller cities you will soon realize that it almost feels like detroit or worse.

PS. scary thing is usually when debts get out of control..war usually happens after 

[liketofish]

http://www.findonnelly.ca/sharkfinpetition

That is a waste of my tax money for a MP to spend time to labour for animal rights group. If a Canadian MP has to lobby for a fish, we rather he lobby to protect our salmon & steelhead. But then he has to deal with logging and perhaps salmon fish farms.

Beware that China's MPs may do the same petition to stop import of Canadian lumber as logging has done tremendous damage to the survival and perhaps extinction of the wild salmon stocks.   Stop logging and remove the fish farms for your wild salmon's sake before you talk about shark fins.  

[Schenley]

Liketofish -- your statement "To expect poor fishermen who have very little means beyond basic subsistence to go for modern equipment (like electric shock setup or guns) to be able to do harvesting humanely is not realistic at all. " shows complete ignorance of how the the shark finning industry operates.     It isnt about some poor little Chinese fisherman in a loincloth working to feed his family-- But it IS all about 21 century incredibly wasteful industrial fishing .

[cutthroat22]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r65FgUYdBOc

[Bassonator]

Liketofish -- your statement "To expect poor fishermen who have very little means beyond basic subsistence to go for modern equipment (like electric shock setup or guns) to be able to do harvesting humanely is not realistic at all. " shows complete ignorance of how the the shark finning industry operates.     It isnt about some poor little Chinese fisherman in a loincloth working to feed his family-- But it IS all about 21 century incredibly wasteful industrial fishing .

x2

[Ed]

Liketofish -- your statement "To expect poor fishermen who have very little means beyond basic subsistence to go for modern equipment (like electric shock setup or guns) to be able to do harvesting humanely is not realistic at all. " shows complete ignorance of how the the shark finning industry operates.     It isnt about some poor little Chinese fisherman in a loincloth working to feed his family-- But it IS all about 21 century incredibly wasteful industrial fishing .

And who do you think the industries employ in order to do their fishing? you think that every country has a minimum wage and benefits? Sharks will be consumed just as trees will be cut down in the amazon. People's priorities usually isn't the environment first. Last time I checked Canada and the USA backed out of the Kyoto Protocol so they would save a few bucks.

[liketofish]

If you think sharks are all caught & sold by large fleets like those in Japan or China, you are dead wrong. There are so many little fishing communities all along the African coasts, the islanders, Phillipines, Indonesia etc among some of the poorest countries in the world. These folks are deprived of modern education and whatever they catch help in their subsistence.  These are the people who will find their income greatly affected. They turn those man-eaters that nobody eat or want into something valuable (just like you guys eat tuners & salmon) to sell to the more affluent worlds. In these places, sharks are enemies to them. They eat their valuable fish (just like seals snapping our catch from our lines), and probably eat any one swimming in their paths including poor kids who have no anti-shark nets where they swim or fish. Who want sharks infesting their waters after they cannot catch sharks for selling off? Again, it is the west and the animal rights folks forcing their value on them while the west are ok with their plundering of sea life with tons of waste from their shrimp flleets & depleting off the blue fins with their tuner fleets.

When a tourist or a person is killed in the western world by a shark, it gets in the media. But you think if a poor kid or fisherman got swallowed in these little known communities, they never get reported into the so called 'statistics'. In the old days when people used to flee autocratic communist China by the sea, they swam across the narrow channels trying to seek freedom in Hong Kong. So many of them never made it, just became hamburgers for Mr. Jaws. How many of them ever got reported in media for statistics. These animal rights group paint a picture that sharks are mostly harmless. Don't believe for a minute. Yes, they won't attack you if you are in diving suit like those in  shark dive tourist sites. Try it when you are splashing on the surface as a swimmer, or boat accident survivor. Personally, an extra human life lost to sharks is one too many to lose. It is not a statistic. It is a family's tragedy.

Animal rights group usually don't think so. A while ago, there was a email originated from the anti-shark hunt folks. This email is sickening to any one who treasures human life. It tries to show all the 'horrific' scenes of shark markets. Then it said the markets in the pictures are very near to the Japanese tsunami site. So they shamelessly claim the 20,000 lives lost as a karma of what the Japanese fishermen there do to the sharks, as if implying that they deserve their tragic fate. What a sickening message for some very extreme people. Their message is like if you harm the animals, you deserve your demise. No wonder we see the tree spikers, the eco terrorists, who put long nail spikes into trees so that loggers can be injured or killed when their power saws cutting through the trees hitting the spikes like bullets. To think these folks will have any thought about saving precious human lives lost in increased shark attacks after shark hunts are stopped in the world is just a waste of time. 

[Schenley]

Nice tirade dude.... but you are still ignoring the fact that it is INDUSTRIAL fishing that is creating havoc on the ocean's fish populations.  And dont give me the crap about the poor little native kid eaten by sharks, so its OK to massacre every shark that can be caught to cut its fins off and sell them to the Asians..

http://www.stopsharkfinning.net/shark-finning.htm

[liketofish]

If it is not a problem for you that unguarded swimmers & poor kids without shark net in their swimming area got eaten by more & more sharks after shark fishing is banned world-wide, then we have no common point to argue about. I treasure one human life more than a shark. What is the point to talk about cruelty to shark when it also mercilessly devour its preys. The industries can be regulated to have more humane way of finning sharks such as bonking it like us on salmon, or shooting it like people do for large halibut.

To me, sharks have no right about all other ocean life forms which human prey for food, including your salmon, tuner, snapper, shrimps, halibut and numerous others. Why the heck shark has to be exempted from being harvested? If a shark is killed humanely, finned, and dumped overboard, it actually returns its nutrients to the sea life at large which it took from. It will benefit many bottom dwellers in the oceans. Shark fin is not just a delicacy for the Chinese. Its soft cartilage has been proven as a cancer fighting ingredient in consumption by many cancer sufferers, at least in Asia. Once I watched a TV documentary exploring the cancer fighting quality of shark's cartilage. It had two cancer cells in comparison. One cell got no treatment, and the microscope shows the cell multiplies with more blood vessels connecting to the tumorous cell. The other cell got droplets of shark cartilage extract. Amazingly, after treatment, the cancer cell shrank as the blood vessels fail to grow to supply the cancer cell with blood. It was jaw dropping to see the result. Go to health food store and explore this product if you or folks you know have cancer.

I don't have compassion on man eaters like shark. I don't trust all the science from these extreme groups. Haven't we seen the scientific data tampered or altered by some scientists bent on their drive for global warming. I just don't see sharks more endangered then whales, blue fin tuner, and I don't see the method of shark hunting killing zillions of by-catches like that done by the shrimp fleets. So why the heck Chinese will have to give up shark fin soup when the west can fish all they want & enjoy their delicacies. Asians often eat things westerners don't care a dime. Stop pushing us around what we can or cannot eat.

I personally don't even get to have shark fin soup once a year. It is only when you go to wedding banquet or so that you get to taste it. So it is not a big deal for me personnally to do without it. It is the idea that the extremist groups of the west pushing their extremist agenda on our culture that I object. Time has changed. China is not a push-over country like 100 years ago. Better take care your own turf before you step on ours.  It is about time the West stop pushing their agenda on the East. Banning our ceremonial soup is an assault on our cultural practice. Can China ask the West to stop eating turkey for Easter? Can we even ask Canada to stop salmon farming, or excessive logging? These things continue to contribute degrading of the environment and endangering wild salmons. So these are not important issues and eating shark fin soups are? So much so that even our MPs, MLAs and city governments are wasting our tax money on it while they should be banging their heads on stopping all things which hurt the salmon. Go figure. I guess anti-shark-fin-soup is currently politically correct that politicians line up in drones for it.

I rest my case now. Further debate is meaningless. It all depends on where you stand. If you don't like the soup or it is not your cultural practice for eons of time, or if you buy the extremist groups' message, I can understand your position. While there are some Chinese or Asians are for banning the soup, the majority want their soup to stay. Most Chinese are upset that Gwai Lo are pushing their agendas down their throats while the west do so much environmental damages in the past & on going. It is unfair. I am with the majority of our culture. That is all I can say and no more comments forthcoming from me on this issue.

[Rodney]

I must have just read the most ridiculous post on the forum since it was established. Unbelievable that people hold this belief.

[troutbreath]

Dr Phil's seven step approach is probably the best defense/offense on overcoming the lure of the sharkfin soup.

http://drphil.com/articles/article/173