Companies, challenged over the ethics of serving shark fin soup at banquets and other functions, are quickly abandoning the practice ‘to do the right thing’.

The meeting room at the posh five-star Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Central, was a hive of activity, packed with dozens of journalists, and company officials, amid the din of chattering voice. Suddenly the room fell into a silence, equally as deafening, as the last question, was put to Alibaba Group chairman and CEO, Jack Ma . Heads turned quickly to see who had the temerity to lay down the challenge, “Is Alibaba an ethical company?”

It was Nov 6, 2007. The gathering, was called, in a spirit of celebration, after the group’s highly successful Hong Kong Stock Exchange IPO. The offering had raised a whopping HK$13.1 billion ($1.7 billion) in gross proceeds.

Caught off-guard, Ma quickly turned defensive. As he prepared to answer, probably, he wondered what the questioner was referring, and in parallel how to defuse the pointed question without getting bad publicity for the company was a platform for millions of buyers and suppliers around the world to carry on e-commerce. The question had been put by Dr Brian W Darvell, a Reader at the University of Hong Kong, at the time. He attended the meeting as a private individual. “I went on through some generalities, becoming more specific and finally landed on the question of the sale of shark fins on the Alibaba.com website. I wanted Ma to ban sharks fin listings on his web portal.”

Darvell recalls Ma asking if he could answer in Chinese, and Darvell suggested it would not be very helpful to him. So Ma, a former English teacher at Hangzhou Teachers College, spoke in English and said very plainly, after some preamble, that he understood the problem. He pledged immediately that he and his family members would henceforth refrain from eating shark fin soup, and also that he would do his best to persuade Alibaba employees to do the same. “Just to make sure, I got him to repeat this,” Darvell says.

Ma then promised to discuss the issue, but asked that the discussions be done “offline”, handing Darvell his business card.

“The assembled press was quite animated and I was pursued by some out of the meeting, but there was no trouble,” Darvell. He noted wryly that the company did not call security guards to chase him from the meeting, even though he admitted, he was a gate crasher. Darvell explained that he did not exactly get into the press conference with forged press credentials, but had bluffed his way into the conference.

Despite Ma’s promise and pledge, nothing happened. Darvell spent the next year trying to get Alibaba to address the issue.

Another opportunity arose to nail Ma. The Alibaba CEO was giving a lecture at the University of Hong Kong on Dec 1, 2008. “I (being a staff member of the university) registered and attended. As Ma left afterwards by a side door, I managed to catch up with him (chasing him and his entourage along the dark path around the outside of the Lok Yew Hall).

Despite his minders, I asked him what he proposed to do to honor his promise of a year ago, and whether he would stop facilitating the sale of shark fin [on his Alibaba website],” Darvell said, while at the same time, trying to deliver his name card to Ma.

“I was intercepted then by John Spelich (the VP of the group). I explained the situation to him in 15 seconds, and he said we must have lunch. We did so a fortnight later.

“Subsequently, Spelich and I had several meetings, culminating in a change in policy to exclude shark fins from Alibaba.com’s listings, followed by an announcement that Alibaba would cease to list shark fins, on Jan 1, 2009. We have been in email contact ever since, mostly discussing others monitoring the website, and taking cheats down whenever they appeared,” Darvell says.

Speaking to China Daily from Kuwait, where Darvell is now based, he explains that he became involved in the shark fin issue largely because of his long term interest in marine life. Darvell, who was founding Chairman of the Hong Kong Marine Conservation Society, a post he held for seven years, says the shark fin issue is an issue of marine conservation. Although it’s one of several major problems, the shark fin issue is symbolic.

“What mostly concerns me is the criminal aspect: murder, intimidation, illegal fisheries, high-seas transfers, evasion ... This is lucrative for a very few and they have no scruples. People have received very nasty approaches, and I have seen some,” he explains in an email to China Daily.

John W. Spelich, Vice president, International Corporate Affairs, Alibaba Group, confirmed during an interview with China Daily, that at the end of 2008, the group made a corporate decision to ban shark fins products sales on all its platform, after examining the facts about the shark fin business.

Attired casually in a white shirt and dark pants, Spelich, who confirmed the meeting with Darvell and subsequent events, says Alibaba is aware of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES). The United Nations-backed conference is aimed at regulating international trade in endangered species such as sharks. CITES has appealed to businesses to take stronger action to protect wildlife at risk.

“As we are a user site, we rely on interested parties (such as Darvell) to find listings that violate our rules, considering we do not want to be part of that type of business,” he stresses. “We are here to facilitate small businesses, and so we are doing what we are supposed to do, and to do the right thing.”

Alibaba is one of the growing number of companies in Hong Kong responding favorably to the World Wild Life Fund’s campaign “Save our oceans - say no to shark fins”. More than 130 companies have joined the campaign and have pledged to stop serving sharks fins at their companies’ corporate dinners and other functions.

WWF says sharks play a vital role in the global marine ecosystem. Top predators, they feed on weaker species and help control the population of other marine creatures in the oceans. Without the balance sharks provide, life underwater would be forever changed.

“The enormous global demand for shark fin and other shark products is tipping that balance. Every time someone eats shark fin soup, they are contributing to the destruction of our planet’s ocean ecosystems,” WWF says on its website.

“Shark’s fin, endangered reef species and black mosses have no longer been served at corporate banquets since 2009. says the Corporate Marketing and Communications, Chief Executives of the Bank of China (Hong Kong) Limited. “To pledge our support to conservation of sharks, the Group signed the “No Shark’s Fin Pledge” initiated by WWF Hong Kong in 2011, stopping to supply or serve shark’s fin or provide any promotions relating to shark’s fin,” the statement went on. 

But to many Hong Kong restaurants, serving sharks fin business is thriving, especially when they cater to weddings. Hong Kong people consider it a delicacy and they do not “buy” the story that sharks will go extinct.

Joan Chan, a manager of a restaurant in Jordan, that specialises in wedding dinners , says her company does offer shark fin in one of its wedding dinner packages since there is still high demand for it in the city.

Asked whether customers could change the sharks fins from the menu, she said, “No problem.” The only catch is that they have to pay a surcharge of between HK$150 to HK$200 per table, for the change. We have not seen a big decline in people taking off sharks fin soup off the menu.”

Yet there are others like the Shangri-la hotel group, the resort company, which operates 72 hotels, which took shark fin soup off its menu in January, just before the Chinese Spring festival. In November last year, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Hotels Group (HSH), which owns and operates all Peninsula Hotels, became the first traditional hotel in Hong Kong to remove the dish from its restaurants, on January 1, 2012.

Shark fins are only a by-product

Most people believe erroneously, that fishermen catch the sharks for their fins only. This is not true. The reality of what is happening in the fishing industry is that the fishermen, such as those in Japan, go fishing for tuna, and in the process, catch sharks which they process for the meat.

“Shark fins happen to be only a by-product which they export to Hong Kong, as the Chinese eat it as a delicacy,” Ricky Leung, Marine Products Association, spokesman, said, in a strong defense of the sharks fins trade. “Since the fisherman sell all the sharks’ meat for consumption, they dry the shark fins and export them to whoever wants to buy them.”

“In the 60s and 70s, Hong Kong people were not making much money and so the demand for shark fin at that time was only between 20 to 30 tons per month. Today, we estimate the shark fin demand is 100 to 200 tons monthly,” Leung says, pointing out that the city had become prosperous over the years and so more people could afford to eat shark fins.

And as he talked, Leung became more voluble, as he grew emotional about the issue, especially when he touched on the subject of green groups, which had emerged over the last 10 to 20 years. Conservationist advocate a ban on trade in shark fins on the grounds that the species is now endangered.

“Since they (green groups) found shark fin was a good subject which caught people’s imagination, they started this sharks’ preservation campaign and urged people not to kill them,” he says. “This is not reasonable because in this world people eat meat. So when people kill animals like pigs, which cry before they are led to the slaughter house, it is alright.”

“Likewise, there is no hue and cry over shark meat sales, but when it comes to shark fin, it is a no-no,” Leung says. “So what do we ask the fishermen to do, take the meat and throw away the fins?” he asks.

Leung points out that people everywhere, including in the US and Europe, are allowed to eat sharks meat, but they were not allowed to eat shark fin. Also, the green groups do not target other types of meat, showing their bias toward shark fin.

“What we must remember is that fishermen are mostly poor people, and if they catch sharks and are able to sell the fins, it adds to their meager income.

“In countries like Africa, the people are so poor and they cannot earn much. So, sometimes when they are lucky enough to catch sharks, they are able to supplement their income by exporting the fins to Hong Kong, as well as the sharks skin and bones,” Leung adds. “Hong Kong has been dealing with shark fin from Africa for over 40 years. And aside from this product, they do not have many other products to sell.”

Responding to shark finning (the removal and retention of shark fins, accompanied by the discarding of the rest of the shark body into the ocean) allegations, Leung says, “We have learnt that there is one out of every 100 cases where fishermen cut the fins of the shark and throw the shark back into the sea. And there is the UN convention which governs such acts (which we support).”

If the green groups were really sincere in wanting to protect some shark species, they should go through the proper channels like the United Nations, instead of taking things into their own hands, Leung says.

In Hong Kong, there are at the most about 30 companies which are involved in the import and export of dried sharks fin. With value added activities and the labor, there are about over 1,000 people involved in the business.

In the past, dried sharks fins processing were done in Hong Kong, but as labor costs increased, the processing moved to the mainland. Today about 70 to 80 percent of dried sharks fins that enter Hong Kong, goes to the mainland and other countries.

Leung says that mainland fishermen also caught sharks and so they had their own supplies of sharks fin.