I am excited to tell you that shark fin soup is being taken off the menu in the United States.

Last night, at our urging, Congress passed the Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act as an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, sending the measure to President Biden.

Remember, it was just days ago that Congress sent a captive wildlife protection measure — the Big Cat Public Safety Act — to the President to be signed into law as well, banning the breeding of tigers and other big cats for the pet trade or for use as props at roadside menageries.

Now the Congress has offered protections for wildlife not held as captives but threatened by commercial slaughter. The Shark Fin Sales Elimination Act will halt the domestic trade in fins, used primarily as the centerpiece ingredient in shark-fin soup.

Kudos to Senators Cory Booker, D-N.J., and Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., and Representatives Gregorio Sablan, D-CNMI, and Michael McCaul, R-Texas, for carrying the underlying legislation and working so hard to shepherd it to passage.

We know it’s wrong to kill elephants for ivory, rhinos for their horns, and bears for their gall bladders. Commercial operators, in each case, are killing for just a small part of the animal and discarding the rest of the carcass as commercially unusable trash. The same is true for sharks targeted for their fins.

Shark finning conjures up cruelty and wanton destruction of the medieval era. But it’s more of a modern evil, hacking off the parts of the body required for motion in their ocean environs. Nobody really knows the global toll on sharks killed for their fins, but it has been estimated at an eye-popping 70 million a year.

While the trade is centered in Asia, it is not an entirely uncommon offering in the United States. What’s more, a U.S. national policy banning the fin trade sends a global signal to other nations about the boundaries of culinary preference. When we worked in 2018 to ban a national ban on the sale of dog and cat meat, that law reverberated in China and other parts of the world.

We have just one more week in Congress and other priorities hang in the balance, including the FDA Modernization Act, which is the most important measure ever considered at the national level to reduce animal testing.

We are immensely grateful for your support. We hope you understand that when you invest in our work, we deliver for the animals.

We have the most experienced, savvy team in our field when it comes to animal protection. And we have you and a remarkable set of advocates across the nation and the world.

The results back up that claim.

Let’s celebrate this win for ocean wildlife. And let’s get on with the next big fight.

For the animals,

Wayne Pacelle
President