EATEN TO EXTINCTION
Shark's fin de siècle
Can a pork gelatin substitute satisfy Toronto's appetite for a soup that is decimating the sea's top predator?

TIM SHUFELT

Special to The Globe and Mail

November 17, 2007
Slicing through the waves in countless thriller movies, a shark fin is the very symbol of natural power and ferocity. But in Toronto's culinary community, severed fins symbolize personal power and wealth. Jars of fins line shelves in virtually every Chinese pharmacy and herbal shop around Spadina and Dundas, fetching up to $600 a pound for larger fins from the rarer species. They range from the size of a large tortilla chip to metre-high specimens housed in display cases.
Though it has no proven medicinal value, shark fin is still used in traditional Chinese medicine to strengthen the waist, supplement vital energy, nourish blood, reinvigorate kidneys and lungs and improve digestion. And though they are said to be virtually flavourless, fins are prized for the glutinous strands they add to shark-fin soup, a high-end dish that appears on the menu of upscale Asian restaurants in Toronto, Markham and Richmond Hill, costing up to $300 for a four-portion serving.
But the multibillion-dollar industry leaves tens of millions of sharks dead each year. So a Japanese company, Nikko Yuba Seizo Co., has recently launched an imitation shark-fin product in China made from pork gelatin.
Shark-fin soup, which until the 1980s was known only to the Chinese province of Canton and parts of Southeast Asia, exploded in popularity with the rise in wealth of the Chinese middle class. In recent years, that culinary fashion has extended to Toronto's Asian population, one of the largest in North America.
"People get wealth and they want fancy delicacies," said John Higgins, director of the chef school at George Brown College, adding that he recently ate at a Chinese restaurant in Richmond Hill with a display of large fins. "It's a status thing, especially at weddings."
However, Mr. Higgins said he is skeptical that the faux fins will be accepted as a substitute by Toronto's Chinese diaspora. There is no extravagance in a bowl of pork gelatin, he said. "I think they'd just pull it off the menu," rather than substitute the imitation product, he said.
"We can't not have it on the menu," said spokeswoman Christina Li, at Ambassador Chinese Cuisine in Richmond Hill. "But we try not to promote it as much." The city's Chinese community is well aware of the soup's bad press in recent years, which has somewhat soured the local appetite for shark fin, Ms. Li said. But it remains a pillar of fine Asian cuisine. "We would like to do something, but we are not fishermen. We cannot stop how they kill them," she said.
Almost every species of shark is targeted, but the big money is in the big game. A single whale-shark fin can sell for up to $100,000, according to Rob Stewart, the Toronto-based writer, director and star of the documentary Sharkwater, released in Canada in May and now in theatres in the United States.
Consequently, the populations of some large predatory species, including hammerhead, tiger, bull and dusky sharks have fallen by 97 to 99 per cent along the eastern U.S. coast, according to a 2007 Dalhousie University study.
The method of harvesting fins is also particularly brutal. Because fins are more valuable than shark meat, after the fins are sliced off, the carcass is often thrown overboard, where it is left to die. "Even the most decrepit boat, without refrigerators, can go out and fin sharks," Mr. Stewart said, adding that fins take up little space and do not need to be refrigerated.
Even though more than 60 countries have banned the practice of shark finning since 2004, it is still legal to import fins in most countries, including Canada, Mr. Stewart said.
The practice of shark finning is showing no signs of abating, he said, but he sees promise in changing attitudes. Celebrities such as actor Jackie Chan, director Ang Lee and basketball star Yao Ming have called for a boycott of shark-fin soup, and demand for the dish has dropped sharply in some Asian countries.
Hong Kong Disneyland was pressured into cancelling plans to serve shark's fin soup at wedding banquets in the park when it opened two years ago.
"We're at a point now where shark populations have dropped so much that anything helps and anything hurts. Considering how many people are consuming shark fin in Toronto ... it's significant," Mr. Stewart said.