Taiwan drops shark's fin soup from Beijing banquet

Apr 29, 2011, 6:20 GMT

Taipei - Taiwan said Friday it has dropped shark's fin soup from the menu of a banquet planned in Beijing to promote tourism with mainland China, after protests by animal protection groups.

'We have made changes to the menu, so shark's fin will be removed from the banquet,' Hung Chih-kuang, from the bureau's international affairs section, told the German Press Agency dpa.

An association of 14 Taiwan and Chinese groups had lodged a protest against serving the soup, as the sharks suffer a slow death when they are thrown back in the sea after having their fins cut off.

Environmentalists have argued that the harvest has also caused a sharp decline in the populations of several shark species in Asia.

The Environment & Animal Society of Taiwan welcomed the move.

'We were surprised that the tourism bureau did not know that it is wrong to eat shark's fin until we made the protest,' Chen Yu-min, spokeswoman for the society, told dpa.

'Our next act is to ask all Taiwan government agencies to ban shark's fin soup from their banquets,' she added.

The banquet in Beijing is to be served on Wednesday by 22 of Taiwan's top chefs. It will kick off a one-week Taiwan Food Festival to mark the first anniversary of Taiwan's tourism office in Beijing.

Shark fins are considered a delicacy in many East Asian countries, where they are used for the gelatinous, flavourless soup which is an essential part of any respectable banquet.

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