No Soup For You: Pennsylvania Proposes a Shark Fin Ban

Victor Fiorillo is causing a ruckus again. Over on the Philly Post, he’s celebrating Shark Week by writing about the new PA state senate bill which proposes to ban “the possession, trade, distribution or sale of ‘the raw, dried or otherwise processed detached fin or the raw, dried or otherwise processed detached tail of an elasmobranch,’ the fancy name for the animal grouping that includes sharks.”

Yup, it’s a shark fin ban.

[State senator Larry] Farnese says that the ban is imperative because of the controversial process of finning, a practice banned in the United States and many other nations. In finning, a fisherman in search of prized shark fins, which can fetch many thousands of dollars depending on the size and type, slices the fin off of a living shark and throws the finless animal back in the water to die. No one wants the shark’s meat, because that’s worth drastically less than the fin.

“While finning is illegal under federal law, possession of the fins is not,” explains Farnese. “This is an effort to close that loophole. Plus, finning is just cruel.”

You can read the whole piece on the Philly Post. You can also check out this piece about shark fin soup and the practice of finning that I wrote a few years back after having my first bowl of real shark fin soup at a genius dim sum joint in Denver.

It’s Shark Week, So Let’s Ban Shark Fins in Pennsylvania [Philly Post]

Shark Bite [Westword]