Has the Internet search giant Yahoo! publicly invested in any of the following wild animal products?1. Dried bear gall bladders?
2. Dried Black Rhino horn?
3. Dried Tiger penis?
4. Dried Sharks Fin?
If you answered yes to #4 you would be correct.
Now here's the kicker, how much would you imagine this California based Fortune 500 company has invested in the wholesale slaughter of millions of sharks for profit?
1. $10,000,000?
2. $50,000,000?
3. $75,000,000?
4. 1.2 Billion?
Again if you picked #4 you would be correct. Since 2003 Yahoo! has invested close to $1.2 billion dollars in Chinese web portal Alibaba.com home to the New York Stock Exchange of shark fins and shark products on the Internet. Direct sales through this site represent millions of sharks slaughtered live, just for their fins, while the rest of the animal is dumped back into the ocean.
To produce one ton of dried shark fin, an estimated 1200 animals are killed and then dumped.
Thus far Yahoo! has chosen to frame the issue and ongoing slaughter as a "cultural practices one". It would seem that Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and Alibaba CEO Jack Ma choose only to recognize, invest in, and defend the more profitable "cultural practices" of Asia and beyond.
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