Serves 6

4 dried black mushrooms

2 scallion stalks

Fresh ginger root

16-oz shark's fin (the shinier the better)

2 tbsp sherry

4 cup water

1 chicken breast

2 scallion stalks

3 tbsp oil

5 cup stock

1 tsp salt

2 tbsp sherry

2 tbsp cornstarch

1 cup Stock

Soak dried mushrooms. Trim scallion stalks; slice ginger root and combine in a pan with canned shark's fin, sherry and water. Bring to a boil, then simmer, covered, 15 minutes. Drain shark's fin, discarding liquid, scallions and ginger root. Meanwhile skin, bone and shred chicken breast. Shred soaked mushrooms; cut remaining scallions in 2-inch sections. Heat oil. Brown scallion sections lightly and discard. Add chicken shreds and stir-fry until they lose their pinkness (about 1 minute). Add stock, salt, shark's fin, mushrooms, and remaining sherry. Bring to a boil; then simmer, covered, 30 minutes. Blend cornstarch and remaining cold stock; then stir in to thicken soup, and serve.

There are 400 species of shark, and many are harvested for their fins. Sharks and shark fin are traded throughout Asia but mostly in Hong Kong and Singapore. The United Nations reports over 100 million sharks are killed every year and the number is likely twice that due to lack of reporting. Sharks reproduce slowly thus populations are declining. Finning" is the practice of cutting off only the shark fins and discarding the body. Most sharks are finned because the fin is the valuable part and a fishing boat can hold a large number of fins compared to shark carcasses.

Shark-fin soup was a regional delicacy in the Southern part of China until the late 1980s. The Communist Chinese government denounced shark-fin soup as a symbol of elitism but backed off this stance in the late 1980s. Shark-fin soup became popular as a way of honoring guests because it was thought that shark's fin increased potency and appetite. The demand has increased exponentially in the last 15 years, and now shark's fin soup can be found in most Chinese Restaurants around the world. Hong Kong has roughly 50 percent of the global trade in shark fins but exports from Singapore and Taiwan are increasing.

Shark fin typically is cooked for a very long time until the shark fin separates into needles of cartilage that look like clear noodles. The fin itself has no taste, but it absorbs the flavor of the soup broth it is cooked in. Shark fin has little nutritional value but it does contain high levels of mercury. Sharks, being at the top of the marine food chain, bioconcentrate mercury in their bodies. Mercury, in the form of methylmercury, is evenly distributed in body tissues of fish and thus one finds about the same concentrations in muscle, neural tissue and cartilage. Average size sharks demonstrate mercury concentrations (in muscle) from roughly 0.5 to 2 ug/g (ppm) (Food Additives and Contaminants, Vol. 20, No. 9, September, 2003, pp. 813-818). The mercury concentration in large sharks may reach 5 ppm. The threshold for mercury in seafood, above which fish consumption becomes hazardous, is a hotly debated topic and certainly depends on how much is eaten and how often, but most agree that concern begins at or above 0.1 ppm for pregnant mothers and small children.

BANGKOK, Aug. 31, 2002 - A Thai civil court accepted Friday a 103 million baht ($2.34 million) lawsuit from 15 restaurant owners against U.S.-based conservation group WildAid over its claims shark fins sold in Thailand are tainted with mercury. The restaurant owners said that after WildAid reported in July shark fins sold to restaurants in Thailand contain dangerously high levels of mercury, their soup-sales plummeted by as much as 50%. The suit is against WildAid group and advertising firm WPP Marketing, said Chinatown Food Producers Group Chairman Adul Laohapol. WildAid randomly bought 10 samples of shark fins in Bangkok's Chinatown and sent them to the Thailand Institute of Scientific and Technological Research to be tested. The group found 70% of the shark fins contained extremely high levels of hazardous mercury. Adul claims WildAid provided misleading information to the public, saying other tests on shark fin found no mercury. WildAid, however, insists its information is based on well-grounded research and said it would continue its campaign against use of shark fins.

BANGKOK, Aug. 17, 2004 - Thai Court Acquits Wildlife Activists In Shark Fin Lawsuit - A court acquitted wildlife activists Monday who claimed shark fin soup sold in Thailand may contain mercury poison, an allegation that provoked a 110 million baht (US$2.65 million, euro2.14 million) lawsuit by local sellers of the Chinese delicacy. Judge Chayan Thempiam of the Bangkok Southern Civil Court said defendants from the group WildAid published and distributed information based on scientific facts from government-affiliated laboratories. "The defendants' conclusion that cooked shark fin may have mercury does not contradict the facts," Chayan said in his verdict. "Therefore, to quote and publicize such information does not violate the plaintiffs' rights." Shark fin soup is highly popular among Chinese and is a top selling item at restaurants in Bangkok's Chinatown. A bowl of high-quality soup can cost as much as US$100 (euro80). WildAid is based in San Francisco and has offices around the world, according to the group's Web site. A global WildAid campaign launched in March 2001 said because sharks are predators at the top of the food chain, they ingest all toxic material, including mercury, consumed by smaller fish who feed in polluted waters. The campaign prompted shark fin soup restaurant owners and other retailers to file the lawsuit, saying the claim damaged their businesses. They have 30 days to appeal Monday's ruling. WildAid put its campaign on hold as a result of the litigation. One of the defendants, Bangkok-based WildAid Executive Director Steven Galster, called the ruling a victory not only for his group but for other environmental organizations in Thailand as well. "The ruling sends a signal that so long as we can back up our campaign with the facts, we should feel free to speak up," Galster said. "The plaintiffs' strategy was to shut us up, which unfortunately they succeeded in doing for three years. We will now resume our campaign." Galster said shark protection would be an important topic at the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES), which will hold a meeting in Bangkok in October.

Estimating Exposure to Direct Food Additives and Chemical Contaminants in the Diet

Office of Pre-market Approval, Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (HFS-200)

Food and Drug Administration, 200 C St., SW., Washington, DC 2

Shark is an infrequently consumed food (in the U.S.). Consequently, the consumption information presented in dietary surveys such as the USDA 3-day survey and the MRCA 14-day survey can be expected to overestimate, to varying degrees, the average daily intake of shark consumed by the individual (1). Of these surveys, the MRCA survey, due to its longer time base, is more likely to capture the consumption of infrequently consumed foods . However, due to the extremely low consumption rate for shark, even the MRCA survey would likely overestimate chronic exposure to shark for eaters of shark in the general population. Therefore, to more accurately estimate chronic shark intake, an average daily intake was first calculated using a modified per capita approach, in which the amount of shark disappearing into the U.S. food supply was divided by the population of shark eaters as determined using percentage of eaters information from the state's seafood consumption survey.

According to the state's survey, approximately 1% of the general population are eaters of shark. Thus, of a total estimated U.S. population of 260 million people (1994), there might be 2.6 million people nationwide who are consumers of shark meat.

According to recent (1993) National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) (2) figures, 8.9 x 10⁶ lbs of shark fillets and steaks were produced in the U.S. in 1993. Therefore, the average daily intake of shark is:

8.9 x 10⁶ lbs shark
--------------------------  = 3.4 lbs shark/eater/year = 1554 g/eater/year or 4 g/eater/day.
2.6 x 10⁶ eaters


This average was then used (as noted below) to create a distribution of intakes for shark meat by assuming a standard deviation equal to the mean intake and assuming that the data were distributed in a log-normal fashion (3).

Intake of methylmercury

According to the NMFS, methylmercury comprises 90-100% of total mercury in most fish. For the purpose of this estimate, it was assumed that mercury in shark is 100% methylmercury. To estimate the intake of methylmercury resulting from consumption of shark, log-normal distributions based on the mean shark intake and the mean methylmercury concentration in shark (and their associated standard deviations) were used in a Monte Carlo simulation (3). That is, exposure was calculated assuming that 4 +/- 4 g shark is the mean daily consumption for eaters and that shark is contaminated with methylmercury at a level of 0.96 +/- 0.61 ppm. The log-normal distributions of these data sets were combined to give a methylmercury intake distribution for shark eaters. The results of this calculation are as follows: