Argumentative Essay On Shark's Fin Soup

An Argumentative Essay: For or against the consumption of Shark’s Fin Soup and why?

Chinese New Year is just around the corner, and this stretch around mid-February always ignites a fresh wave of demand for an exotic delicacy, typically served during Chinese New Year Eve dinners – Shark’s Fin Soup. The dish should be boycotted for the cruelty that goes into the obtainment of the ingredients, our reluctance to save the sharks, our indifference towards the plight of the world’s oceans, concerns about the roots of a culture being tied to this dish and the health threats that the thick, cholesterol-laden soup presents all make it less than appealing, though most of the consumers are blind to such facts. It is, indeed, a pressing issue that had not been given much media coverage, and this delicacy should be boycotted for the reasons further elaborated upon below.

The delicacy is aptly named

For the vegetarians and vegans, the argument presented is that no animal should be slaughtered and eaten. However, the shark 's fin trade is different in several ways. Firstly, in the dish, only the fins of the shark are used, and the rest of the shark is left to rot. Finning a shark while it is still alive is extremely cruel and causes unbelievable pain to the creature. Imagine if this were to happen in a slaughterhouse. In a hypothetical situation, humans only want to eat drumsticks at KFC, so we cut off the legs of a chicken, and leave it in a cage to bleed out. This would definitely be deemed as illegal based on the regulations of many countries on slaughterhouses. Besides, sharks are not farmed animals, but part of the marine ecosystem - so many of them are being killed and their overall species are being threatened with endangerment. A staggering 143 (more than 55%) of shark species are almost extinct, including the whale shark and