It’s about cruelty, not profits
From Voices, TODAY • Monday • June 9, 2008 Letter from DUDLEY AU THE REPLY from Resort World Sentosa (RWS) to the letter “Of sharks’ fins and high rollers” (June 5) from Liang Dingzi appears to have missed the point. RWS referred to a synergy of business and environment protection in “The 90-10 business decision” (June 7). While we understand that in any business, profitability is preferred to insolvency, the moral balance sought relative to the consumption of sharks’ fins is based on cruelty. Protection, it is admitted, has a link to the species whose fins are consumed to satisfy epicurean fastidiousness, as well as traditional epicurism. The species can be brought to the brink of extinction or extinction itself. In this sense, RWS is correct about fauna protection because the breeding of sharks is relatively slow, having only one or two offspring between fairly long intervals. The crucial factor, however, is the cruelty inflicted on the sharks. The dorsal fins are sliced off and the ...