“Lawmakers who pushed for it have said Chicago’s Chinatown has been a hub for the sale of shark fin in the Midwest,” says the Tribune, and one activist site claims Chicago is home to “scores of restaurants serving shark fin soup.” We suspect this is considerable hyperbole— if a score, as Abraham Lincoln taught us, is twenty, we barely have “scores” of Chinese restaurants at all, and we doubt more than a handful have ever sold shark fin soup… and we have a feeling more than a few of those were some other white fish-meat to begin with. This is not to condone the harvesting of shark fin off otherwise unused animals, a brutal, environmentally damaging and wasteful process, but merely to observe the eternal inflation of crises by those promoting them. Nevertheless, it is we suppose a good thing that a market for shark fin, of whatever size, has been legally cut off, and so Governor Quinn signed HB 4119, banning the sale, trade, distribution or possession of shark fins, at a ceremony at the Shedd Aquarium’s Wild Reef exhibit Sunday. [Tribune]
