Fake fins eye saving sharks
A Japanese company is launching fake shark fins in China - made
of pork.
It hopes to tap a market as prices for real shark fins rise amid
concerns the species is being hunted to extinction.
Shark fin is considered one of the top delicacies in Chinese
cuisine and also fetches high prices in select Japanese
restaurants.
Nikko Yuba Seizo Co, a Japanese food-processing company, said it
had developed artificial shark fins made out of pork gelatin. Its
top executives returned today from a two-day trip to China to
introduce the products.
"Shark fin prices have been rising constantly in recent years due
to a fall in the volume traded, so we decided to develop an
artificial fin," said Tadashi Kozuka, a top official of the company
which also trades real shark fins imported from Indonesia, Brazil
and elsewhere.
"We visited Shanghai and Dalian - big cities where wealthy Chinese
people live - to seek trading partners. I guess fins sell well
among rich people," he said.
But he said the artificial version would also appeal to Chinese who
would not be able to afford the real fins, which are served as a
luxury at weddings and other important occasions.
Kozuka said the company had long queues of customers when it first
presented its product in China at a trade fair in June in the
southern city of Guangzhou.
The price of the gelatin-made fin costs only one-tenth of the
real one, or about 1500 yen ($18) a kilogram wholesale, he
said.
Controversy over China's appetite for shark's fin rose last year
when the country's most famous sports personality, basketball star
Yao Ming, called for a boycott of the dish to save the fish from
extinction. Some species of shark are now endangered.
Environmentalists have campaigned to stop "finning," when fishermen
catch sharks and cut off their fins before throwing the carcasses
back into the sea. The practice is blamed for preventing an
accurate picture of shark numbers.
AFP
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