The Millennium Seoul Hilton Hotel serves shark fin. Not shark fin soup, but shark fin.

[hedgehog]

It's a featured item on its menu, along with the $420 caviar.

I feel like an undercover agent. We stayed there because the company gets a discount. The rest of the clientele seems to be the Asian equivalent of Euro-trash.

I doubt very much that the Hilton Corporation expects its American customers to find out it serves shark fin as a menu item in Asia. I really, really doubt they'd like to know what we think about it.


Let's tell them anyways.

:evilgrin:

Hilton Worldwide: "Living Sustainably by focusing on products and programs that not only delight our guests, but also protect the world we live in. "

Robert Allegrini
Vice President, Corporate Communications
The Americas & Luxury Brands
[e-mail]

[hedgehog]

1. Hey, 40 views and not one reply or rec? Folks, I think if we spread the word on this,

we can get shark fin off the menu.

[annm4peace]

2. I hope there is a boycott

Hilton often has Union workers protesting against them.

They are disgusting company

[HipChick]

3. They serve dolphin on the menu in the Caribbean...

Remind me again what right the US has to determine what other people eat in other parts of the world...

[flvegan]

4. Ruining ecosystems kinda sorta crosses the whole land boundary thing.

Don't you think? Guess it's all in how you look at it.

And then there's the animal suffering, but that's probably not a concern. Just guessing.

[hedgehog]

7. It'd be nice if you could feed this info into your network of contacts.

The best way to help the sharks is to make it very un-cool to hunt them or eat them. I'm pretty sure the Hilton Group does not want to be the poster child for corporate greed and wanton excess!

[flvegan]

9. Consider it done.

[Luminous Animal]

21. Ranching ruins eco-systems, too. So do pig farms. And near 100% suffer their entire lives.

So... where is the outrage for serving pork and beef? Who here is going to make that phone call to any hotel?

[flvegan]

22. Really?

You want to take this up with me? Really?

[quakerboy]

23. that right there

was funny.

[Luminous Animal]

24. No. But I found your response a bit perplexingly muted... considering.

It always makes me laugh when people are outraged... OUTRAGED... over one part of animal exploitation but happily chow down on their culturally acceptable meat. Really, if one is a meat eater, then why is a dog more sacred than a cow?

[hedgehog]

30. FWIW - I try to purchase meat that is grown in a sustainable fashion.

So my objection to eating shark isn't about eating animals per se, it's about sending a species to extinction in order to eat a prestigious food of little nutritional value.

There are arguments to be made regarding eating beef but not dog, pig but not dog, beef but not horses etc; but the extinction of a species is not part of those arguments.

[flvegan]

35. Sorry that I didn't see your response earlier.

Please re-read your response. Then, look at my screen name. Let me know what part of flVEGAN did you miss, okay? Maybe we have mixed signals and this is more about the OP and not about my response.

[hedgehog]

5. Is that dolphin, as in marine mammal, or dolphin as in fish?

The mahi-mahi or common dolphinfish<1> (Coryphaena hippurus) is a surface-dwelling ray-finned fish found in off-shore temperate, tropical and subtropical waters worldwide.

Mahi-mahi are highly sought for sport fishing and commercial purposes. Sport fishermen seek them due to their beauty, size, food quality, and healthy population. Mahi-mahi is popular in many restaurants.
Mahi-mahi can be found in the Caribbean Sea, on the west coast of North and South America, the Pacific coast of Costa Rica, the Gulf of Mexico, the Atlantic coast of Florida, Southeast Asia, Hawaii and many other places worldwide.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahi-mahi


Also, we have every right to comment on this. First off, Hilton is an American based company catering to Americans worldwide. Second, sharks belong to everyone.

[Mendocino]

6. There is a fish called Dolphin

rather than the mammal of the same name. But I wouldn't eat either.

[LeftyMom]

12. Because many shark species have lost 90% of their historic populations

They tend to be slow reproducers* and as apex predators their healthy populations are vital to their entire food webs, because they pick off the sick and dying animals to keep the overall populations healthy and in balance. Sharks have been around since before the dinosaurs, and might be gone because people can't be bothered to stop eating their fins?

Also, shark finning involves cutting the fins off of the shark and throwing the rest of the animal back into the ocean to die. It's fucking horrifying.

*how depends on the species. Sharks are weird in that they have three different methods of breeding- live birth after placental development, live birth after development from an internal yolk sack, and eggs fertilized internally and left to develop internally. So some sharks might have one or two pups in a go and some might have a couple hundred (most of which will die as babies.) But they're all slow to develop sexually and reproduce to small numbers compared to bony fish. As a result their populations are slow to recover from hunting, and in some cases may not do so at all.

[flvegan]

14. DON'T TELL

SELFISH IDIOT MORON DOUCHEBAGS WHAT TO EAT/NOT EAT, AMERICAN CULTURE PUSHER!!!!!!!!!!

[LeftyMom]

15. Oh well, 450 million years was a good run.

:shrug:

I should clarify a previous statement: Sharks have been around in recognizable "modern" forms since before the dinosaurs. They've actually existed- and dominated the oceans more often than not- since around the time plants started colonizing the land. That's totally an okay legacy to sacrifice for expensive soup. :sarcasm:

[OnyxCollie]

25. LOL!

Well, that was nice.:rofl:

[csziggy]

13. Is that dolphin porpise or dolphin fish

Dolphinfish varieties such as pampano and mahi-mahi are common food fish. They are NOT warmblooded dolphin related to porpoises and whales.

Mahi-mahi are a reasonable choice of fish to eat:

The Monterey Bay Aquarium classifies mahi-mahi, when caught in the US Atlantic, as a "Best Choice", the top of its three environmental impact categories. The Aquarium advises to "Avoid" imported mahi-mahi harvested by long line but rates troll and pole-and-line caught as a "Good Alternative."

The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) classifies mahi-mahi as a "moderate mercury" fish or shellfish (its second lowest of four categories), and suggests eating six servings or fewer per month.<5>

<SNIP>

The Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) classifies mahi-mahi caught by line/pole in the US as "Eco-Best" in its three-category system,<7> but classifies all mahi-mahi caught by longline as only "Eco-OK" or "Eco-Worst" due to longline "high levels bycatch, injuring or killing seabirds, sea turtles and sharks." <8>
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahi-mahi#Environmental_and_food_safety_concerns

[formercia]

29. Different Dolphin

Same as Mahi Mahi in Hawaii.



https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Mahi-mahi

[KamaAina]

34. That is most likely the dolphin fish

known elsewhere as dorado or mahi mahi.

It freaked me out, too, when I first saw it on a menu in Florida decades ago, as dolphin. :scared:

[redqueen]

8. K&R

[LeftyMom]

10. I'll call.

Thanks for posting.

[hedgehog]

11. Anybody have Paris' contact info?

[Hoopla Phil]

20. She was cut off from the family a while ago.

[MADem]

16. Do they serve any of those cute dogs I've seen in the food market down the road?

I know when the Olympics came to town, they hid that sort of commerce away....I wonder sometimes if it came back?

[hedgehog]

17. My husband has noticed that the farm near the plant no longer raises

any dogs or chickens - just beef cattle.

[MADem]

19. Good. That always troubled me. nt

[nadinbrzezinski]

18. Sent an email.

[redqueen]

26. Read about the practice of shark finning.

Write to this place, and boycott any restaurant that serves shark fin soup. Please.

:kick:

[Fool Count]

27. And why is shark fin more outrageous than shark fin soup?

Shark fin soup is made out of shark fin, no? Am I missing something here?

[hedgehog]

28. I've never heard of people eating shark fin as opposed to shark fin soup,

but that was what was on the menu. (In fact, I had the impression that shark fin is mostly gristle!) I'm assuming that shark fin as opposed to shark filet indicates that the fish is caught, deprived of its fins, then tossed overboard to die. So no, as near as I can tell, as far as the shark is concerned serving shark fin soup and serving shark fins amounts to the same thing. I just figured that if we want to get this off the menu, we should call it the same thing Hilton calls it. IIRC after jet lag, this item was on a menu directed at customers speaking Chinese. It's possible that the English translation I was looking at was a mistake and the product being sold is indeed shark fin soup.

[mainer]

31. It must be shark fin soup. The fin is just cartilage, isn't it?

Although I guess it could be served thinly sliced and cold, like pig knuckle or jellyfish.

[lonestarnot]

32. Disgusting pigs.

[Obamanaut]

33. Pigs, if they have a choice, are not disgusting at all. They will not normally make their 'wallow

hole' near where they eat, and only do so when the farmer/owner makes it so.

They make good pets. They are quite smart, and can even be house broken.

[lonestarnot]

36. Good point. They are insulting to pigs!

[Atman]

37. I stayed at the Millenium Hilton in Bangkok...incredible food, incredible hotel.

Only got to spend one night because they had declared a state of emergency because of the Red Shirt uprising, and the military had just killed several people in the streets. So our only safe choice was hunkering down at the hotel. There were three restaurants in the hotel...being at the tail end of our two week vacation, considerably lighter in the coin department, we opted for the buffet instead of the steakhouse or seafood restaurant. Let me tell you, this was no ordinary hotel buffet. It was massive, with everything from a noodle soup bar to carving stations, and all sorts of crazy shit that you'd expect to see Andrew Zimmer eating. I don't recall if shark fin was among the items, but it might have been. All of the food was spectacular, though, so I might have tried the shark fin if I had seen it.

Oh, and as others have pointed out, eating "dolphin" is not eating Flipper, which is a porpoise. No one eats porpoise, at least not that I've ever heard of.