Alibaba.com is one of the largest online traders of seafood and other products, especially shark fin - without regards to source or sustainability.
The practice of shark finning, where a shark is captured, the fins removed, often while the shark is still living and the body discarded, is a brutal practice that is decimating shark populations worldwide.
This lucrative market for shark fin is creating huge incentives for poor nations- as represented by scores of businesses on Alibaba.com- to remove the ocean's shark populations. Without any control, it is likely that endangered and threatened shark species are traded in great volume at great profit.
As a web based business gateway, Alibaba.com is collusive and partner to this criminal and wasteful practice.
Dear Sirs.
On behalf of those undersigned concerned about our oceans and oceanic predators we are protesting Alibaba.com as the promotor of sellers, importers and exporters of SHARK FINS.
This action is taken in view of the fact that ALIBABA is one of the world's foremost web suppliers of dried SHARK FINS.
The practice of shark finning is causing huge incentive for the unsustainable and often illegal removal of shark populations world wide.
Removing sharks from the oceans will result in an ecological imbalance and is causing irreversible damage to the marine ecosytem.
Finning sharks and discarding the body is a brutal practice and is taking food from the mouths of poor nations who fish for sharks. The profiteering driven by the demand for shark fin soup is unconscionable, and any consumer of shark fin soup, without knowledge of the source of the shark fin is criminal by association.
It is for this reason that this Organization and its members will be taking the following actions:-
1) Global Boycott of the ALIBABA Company.
2) Global Boycott to any Importer or Exporter that deals with Alibaba.
3) Global Boycott to any shop, outlet or restaurant that offer shark fins.
4) Global Boycott of all known Shark Fin Suppliers.
We will also be spreading the word to all our contacts via the media and the Internet.
More information about Shark Finning can be seen at www.sharkmans-world.org/sos.htm and www.sharkstewards.com,
or see the film Sharks:Stewards of the Reef.
Yours respectfully
