Angela Smith

Shark Finning

The following is a fictitious apologue, or a narrative intended for moral figurative paralleling through an example that is equally as shocking and inhumane as shark finning.

A tall man with dark brown hair looks down at his watch to check the time. He taps his foot absently as he waits for his wife to come downstairs. 'Beep Beep' the sound of the horn outside reminds him that the impatient taxi driver has been waiting for several minutes. His beautiful wife gracefully moves down the stairs and he quickly grabs her coat and holds it open for her to step into. “We've kept the taxi waiting, shall we go out now?” he asks in good humor, winking at his smiling wife. They step out of their house and walk quickly through the rain and get inside the taxi. “To the Mystique Royale please,” the man says to the taxi driver as he dabs at the droplets of water from his shoulders and hair.

The Mystique Royale is the finest restaurant in Paris, and is known for serving only the most trendy and fashionable cuisine. As of late the Mystique Royale has been highly praised and publicized for its latest cuisine miracle – the tender and savory Blanquette de cheval. The couple is seated at their table, which is in a prime location, overlooking the Seine and a beautiful garden. With a self satisfied smile the man puts his menu down and whispers their order to the waiter. His wife looks at him with a playful smile causing a dimple to form on her right cheek, suggesting that she might know that he is surprising her with the dish that everyone has been talking about. A few minuets later their waiter brings out a covered dish and sets it down in the center of their table. The cover is removed and the steaming aroma wafts up and overtakes the couples senses. Both of them stare for a moment at the beautifully displayed Blanquette de cheval, as their mouths water in anticipation of the delectable dish. Neither the man nor the woman are aware of how the dish is prepared, or how much effort or time it takes; though they both will enjoy the dish and most likely come back for more.

What they do not know is that the dish is prepared using only the legs of Equus ferus, or wild horses. The culinary creation, Blanquette de cheval started out much like many other popular dishes, with only a few individuals ever having the opportunity of tasting it. However, as the dish grew in popularity its demand grew until the price of regular bodily horse meat was so low that it had to be given away. Once the horse-meat market reached this low point, it became more cost effective to only harvest the part(s) of the horse that could bring in the most revenue (the legs). What the couple at the Mystique Royale didn't know was that the dish that they paid many Euros for was actually made from horses whose legs had been cut off while they were still alive. They also didn't know that the most cost efficient way to produce this dish was to simply round up wild horses, cut off their legs and leave them to slowly bleed to death.

The apologue of the inhumane slaughter of horses is a fictitious story that draws paralleling lines to the problem that the world faces today in shark finning. The paralleling lines can be traced between the couple who ignorantly eats the desirable dish Blanquette de cheval, that kills hundreds of horses simply for their legs, and those who eat shark fin soup. Some people go to expensive restaurants in order to consume bowls of shark fin soup, all while blissfully unaware of the many sharks who are thrown back alive into the water, to slowly asphyxiate and die as they sink into the depths of the ocean.

These stories contrast the ignorant negligence of people who promote shark finning through their actions, either inadvertently or with purpose, by eating shark fin soup. All people who eat shark fin soup support the finning of sharks and their unnatural and cruel deaths, even if they are ignorant to the ways that the sharks are butchered alive.