The Supermarkets and Sharks Fin Story

The supermarkets in Singapore have been having a busy week, and not because of hawkering their Chinese New Year wares.

The recent buzz has been Thern Da's PR boo boo, which went viral and eventually with NTUC stepping out publicly to declare that they will not be selling sharks fins products after the first quarter of this year. Very shortly after, Carrefour came out proactively to say that they will not be replenishing their sharks fins stocks. Sheng Siong is currently under fire as well, with netizens putting pressure on the company that not only stocks shark fin products, but also featuring baby sharks and other exotic food stuff that you would see during many dive trips every now and then (some of which I didn't even know they can be categorised as food..)

The dive enthusiasts and ocean conservationists are having a field day riding on this wave. Many are calling upon the companies' sense and duty of corporate social responsibility, to pull those products off the shelves. Especially since Sheng Siong has not came out with any statement on their stance, many are also calling upon fellow divers in the community to ply the pressure on Sheng Siong for a favourable response.

Which led me to this post.

I dives, and I am totally for the move towards sustainable fishing and balance of the ecosystem so that our next generation still get to see the beautiful ocean creatures that we see now. I am glad that commercial entities such as supermarkets in Singapore are taking a stand moving in that direction as well. But somehow the way things had turned out, it doesn't seem to address the root problem I feel...

which is..

Supermarkets will only carry things that people will buy. And people are still buying sharks fins.

Why are we eating shark fins in the first place?

Sharks fin, being a delicacy in the past, has become ubiquitous that you can find them off the shelves of supermarkets, in good restaurants, and almost every weekend on wedding dinner menus. I am sure shark fins are delicacies due to the rarity of them being brought to the dinner table in ancient times. The word here is rarity. Wealthy Chinese in the past would have been awed to be able to eat fins that were cut off the sharks that didn't exist in their own country (and had to be imported - 外国货）, or simply want to flaunt their vast wealth to be able put the dish on the table (I think it's probably more the latter). And as more Chinese become more affluent, sharks fins become a status of wealth that became more accessible (along with the other ubiquitous symbol of wealth - LV.Eek.).

Demand rose, but it was not as if the sharks were put on a super breeder program that allows them to keep with the demand...of people who want to eat only their fins.

Does that make sense to you?

It still doesn't make sense to me. I know of people to snide when you tell them that you don't want that bowl of sharks fin soup on the wedding dinner table ("They died already! Why waste?") or the rebukes during this recent media frenzy over Thern Da and NTUC ("Eating sharks fins is a Chinese tradition.It should should be a personal choice whether I want to eat sharks fins or not"). I'm sure these are not people with any ill intent, other than viewing sharks fins as a treat based on the cultural conditioning they get as Chinese.

But that brings me to my point. The mindless consumerism (I blogged about this before, just plugging it in again).

Being mindless is easy - you don't see the chicken, you only see them cling-wrapped packed and frozen. Something I saw before on owning the decision on the life you take for the food on your table - it's being aware and conscious that you know, or at least gnawingly feel the need to decide how what kind of consumer you want to be.

I think at the end of the day, it's not whether if Sheng Siong is going to exercise its corporate social responsibility or not. It is for us, the consumers, to re-examine the fundamental basis of why we are choosing to buy certain staff and remembering where they come from - living forms and creatures that share the planet with us.