Food Network: Shark is off the menu

Aug 16, 2011 12:03 PM by Michele Borboa, MS

Posted in Food & Recipes

Say 'no' To Shark Meat

If you’re planning your two to three servings of fish for the week, don’t count on going to FoodNetwork.com for any recipes featuring shark meat. Thanks to a successful Internet campaign promoting shark conservation, the Food Network has removed all shark meat recipes from their website.

Shark Meat

Shark Week prompts shark conservation petition

Conservation activist Jessica Belsky started the shark saving campaign on Change.org, the world's fastest growing platform for social change, on August 2 during Discovery Channel's Shark Week. Food Network, which previously featured recipes such as shark tacos and shark au poivre, responded to the petition within 10 days and committed to leave shark off the menu.

"As a policy, Food Network and Cooking Channel do not incorporate or showcase recipes that involve animals on endangered species list or the Monterey Bay Aquarium Seafood Watch list, with the recent addition of sharks to those watch-lists, we will make sure that future content does not highlight shark as an ingredient. We understand there are many species with sustainability concerns, and we make efforts to stay informed and pass that information onto our audience," says Susan Stockton of the Food Network Kitchens.

What's wrong with eating shark?

Besides being a fish with the highest levels of mercury, every year tens of millions of sharks are senselessly slaughtered for their fins, known as finning, for the Asian delicacy shark fin soup. Finning is when shark hunters catch sharks, slice off their fins, then let them spin to the bottom of the ocean to bleed to death. It's one thing to catch shark for its fins and meat, but many feel it is inhumane and irresponsible to hunt them solely for their fins.

The shark population is at risk

Many sharks are threatened with extinction, with some species' populations plummeting by as much as 90 percent in recent years. Sharks are listed on the "Red/Avoid" section of the Monterey Bay Aquarium's Seafood Watch guide, along with more than 20 other species of fish like bluefin tuna, Chilean sea bass, and orange roughy.

Get involved because change can happen

Whether it's shark conservation or another cause, don't think your support won't count. This successful campaign that resulted in the Food Network removing shark meat from their website proves there is power in numbers. "We're thrilled that the Change.org platform has successfully connected people who care about the future of sharks to the Food Network, a brand that has a tremendous impact on popular culture," said Sarah Parsons, senior organizer at Change.org. "This is hopefully the first step in a longer partnership, and we're excited to see where it goes."

More than 30,000 people joined the online campaign, many of them after the Food Network had already made the above commitment.

Try a different kind of shark on Food Network

You can still do a search for shark on FoodNetwork.com and find some recipes, but they will surprise you. Got a sweet tooth? Watch this video for Gummy Sharks. And if you're hankering for a spirited drink, try Guy Fieri's Shark Attack Cocktail.

More on Shark Week

Shark Week inspired recipes
The tragedy of shark fin soup
Shark Week: 5 Different species of sharks

Tags: shark week

Comments

Comments on "Food Network: Shark is off the menu"

Go shark fishing and you can catch lunch..Go in the water and you become a lunch possibility.

As a fellow west texan, you know what all the chefs say, eat locally grown products.

guess this makes room on the menu for other predators, rattlesnake, cougar, alligators and crocs, cobras. plenty of rattlesnakes out here in west tx...e and get it !

Congratulations Food Network for helping us conserve sharks and our marine ecosystems. As you are aware tens of millions of sharks are finned alive every year for shark fin soup. As a result many shark species are now teetering on the brink of extinction. But there are many reasons why shark products, meat, fin, cartilage etc should not be consumed by humans: 1) Animal Welfare: Sharks are finned alive and tossed back into the ocean to suffocate and die a slow, painful death. 2) Toxic: Shark Flesh is loaded with the toxic metal, methyl mercury. Studies done by the University of Mainz (Germany) showed 1kg of Blue Shark flesh contained 1400 micrograms of methyl mercury. The danger limit for human consumption is 0.1 microgram per kg of body weight per day. EG a 70kg person should not consumer more than 7 micrograms of methyl mercury per day. Methyl mercury is known to cause problems to the human brain and nervous system. 3) Unsustainable: According to Rob Stewart of Sharkwater fame, global shark populations have plummeted by about 90% over the last 30 years. 4) Destroys the marine ecosystem: Remving the ocean's apex predators, sharks, is removing a key link in the marrine ecosytem chain. It is simple, removing sharks changes the whole balance in our oceans. The North Atlanticc is proof of this where the great sharks have been wiped out, their prey, rays, have proliferated and subsequently placed an unsustainable demand on theeir prey, clams, oysters and scallops, so much so that a century old scallop industry has now collapsed. Please continue to spread the word regarding the importance of shark conservation.

You're missing the point. Asians are mostly to blame when it comes to the shark fin trade, the evidence is everywhere you look. The sharks that are harvested around other areas like the Mediterranean is because Chinese fishermen and traders come to those areas and pay off villagers to hunt and sell their shark fins. And that's also ignoring the fact that Chinese trawlers rape and pillage the ocean right off New Ireland all the time as well as almost everywhere else near by.

why blame the asians only, most of these sharks are harvested from the oceans around europe and mediterrtean,, russia, if these countries are trully , concerned the killing of sharks should stop there. also shark steak are openly sold in many supermarkets around the world, wonder where these meat comes from....?