Deliveroo to remove all shark fin dishes from Singapore platform
Food delivery service Deliveroo has committed to removing all shark fin dishes from its platform here, said the company in a press release on Wednesday (28 November).
Supported by the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF), the move will see 150 shark fin dishes from 34 restaurants taken off the web-based service. The company will also not offer such dishes on it platform in future.
Beyond taking shark fin and any related shark fin products out of its physical and digital menus, Deliveroo has also pledged to not serve such items “at special request on a case to case basis”.
“This is an important step. Deliveroo wants all the restaurants we work with to promote sustainable food production, and that must include protecting endangered species,” said Deliveroo Singapore’s general manager Sid Shanker.
“We are pleased to have joined WWF’s commitment in taking action against serving shark products . We will work with WWF to see what more we can do in this area.”
Singapore No. 2 on list of shark fin traders
According to statistics cited in the release, over 70 million sharks are killed each year to satisfy people’s demand for shark-based dishes.
A joint 2017 report by Traffic, the Wildlife Trade Monitoring Network, and WWF also noted that Singapore has been identified as the world’s second-largest trader of shark fins by value.
However, a 2016 WWF-Singapore survey found that eight in 10 people here have stopped ordering shark fin dishes, with shark protection and environmental concerns being cited as the key reasons.
“This commitment by F&B establishments is crucial to saving sharks and the ecosystems that depend on them. As sustainable options do not exist for sharks, halting consumer demand is the only solution today,” said Kim Stengert, the strategic communication and external relations chief at WWF-Singapore.
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