Edition: U.S. / Global

Soup Has More Than One Cost

Published: October 26, 2003

To the Editor:

It is very sad to read ''Shark Fin With 40 Candles'' (Oct. 12) about a birthday celebration featuring shark fin soup and ''how expensive it is.''

The reason for both the sadness and the expensiveness is that hundreds of thousands of sharks are annually slaughtered (literally the fins are chopped off while the animal is still alive, and the animal is dumped back in the ocean) for this pretentious trade in an ecologically important and increasingly endangered animal.

Hopefully, citizens of the world will rise up and reject indiscriminate cruelty in the name of cultural heritage so that our wildlife can survive.


Long Beach, Calif.

The writer is emeritus president of the Aquarium of the Pacific.