CHINA:Stop the legal market in shark fins NOW

Each year Chinese fishermen slaughter over 50 million sharks for their fins. For their fins. The rest of the shark is thrown back as offal into the water...alive. The animal cannot swim,hunt or fend for itself and literally bleeds slowly to death in excruciating agony. Over fifty million agonizing deaths every year in fact for something that has no nutritional value,only symbolic cachet:the symbolic value of eating something rare and consequently expensive. At least that was case in 12th century China. Since the 1980s,with the rise in China's affluent middle class,the demand for shark fin soup has risen exponentially. What was once the preserve of the Emperor's court is now available to the masses. Tens of millions of middle class professional Chinese. Neither traditional symbolic value nor obscure scarcity value of Shark Fin soup is the real reason therefore why this cruel,savage and inhumane trade still exists.How can it be? It's no longer a culinary prize of the privileged.How many 'traditionalists' would risk prison or a punitive fine if this so-called 'foodstuff' were outlawed? Few would.  And as for the supposed palliative anti-cancer properties of dried fin,it's just debased and laughable and isn't based on any credible science whatsoever. Despite sales of shark fins plummeting in the last two years in domestic China,the trade continues remorselessly threatening a whole marine eco system,as well as the future of individual shark species, over 150 of which are classified as endangered. That's half of the world's total number of shark species. Now who are the heroes and villians in all of this? President Obama signed the Shark Preservation Act in 2011 closing the loopholes through which the fins had previously been legally obtainable in the US. The Governor of California signed Assembly Bill 376 in the following year making it illegal to be in possession of shark fins. Other states have followed and continue to.However, Canada has refused to follow suit. One province,Calgary,even overturned an initial ban after protests and heavy lobbying by the local Chinese business community.Ontario too are reluctant to close an important import gateway for the same reason.On the Asian continent itself, Malaysia has just banned this glutinous and flavourless 'delicacy' from being served at their official state functions. The first world(with the exception of Canada) seems to be taking note of the unbelievable truth about the shark finning trade and is acting towards having none such blood on its hands. With knowledge, and with a groundswell of pressure on the appropriate governments still taking a lassez-faire attitude to the shameless sight of blood red seas,this trade can be choked off and firmly stopped once and for all. The government that can make this lucrative trade an anachronism is,of course,the Chinese government.The CPC want modern China to be exactly that:modern and progressive. Well,prove it,Li Keqiang,prove it. Your country has a cruel record of animal welfare treatment at the best of times beyond the comprehension of anyone with a single cell of pity in their body. Start the process,China,to stop this trade. It has nothing to do with tradition or custom or 'sinophobia'. None of the signatories here have signed out of xenophobic zeal.No-one cares about the ethnicity of the murderers of those sharks,only that those sharks have been murdered. It's all about the money. Even the educated of China are slowly waking up to this fact and are moving on from the old ways which are rusted bars caging the new ways.