And not just because people aren’t afraid of chicken and cows.
People often confront me with the argument that I should be against eating chickens, cows, and other animals if I am against shark finning. While I understand where they are coming from, they don’t understand how global ecology works.
Chickens and cows are in a closed environment, a farm. They do not have any contact with the outside world and do not interact with other species (aside from humans). The animals’ isolated populations are controlled by humans, who provide everything these animals need to survive.
Sharks, and other sea-life, on the other hand live in the ocean. An uncontrolled environment. Sharks interact with all other species of marine life, and being the apex predator, essentially control the ocean’s ecology. By pulling hundreds of millions of sharks from the sea without regulation or concern for the sustainability of shark populations, humans are essentially wiping out sharks from the planet.
Chickens and cows on farms can be bred and bought to replenish their populations. There is no such luxury with sharks. With dwindling populations, sharks will be lucky to survive as a species at the current shark-finning rates.
Lastly, I understand that farm animals are not treated or killed humanely. It is terrible. But their deaths do not significantly impact the earth’s ecology like a shark’s death does.
