Vancouver Chinese restaurant Sun Sui Wah will remove shark fin from its menu, after facing nearly a year of protest from an animal rights group.

Members of the Vancouver Animal Defense League (VADL) staged weekly protests outside Sun Sui Wah’s Main Street location since last March, asking diners to boycott the restaurant for serving what they say is an unethical product.

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At a protest in late January, management of the restaurant finally relented. “[They] came out and said ‘you win, we’re done,’” said Megan Griffin, a volunteer with VADL.

An employee with Sun Sui Wah’s Vancouver location confirmed the restaurant will stop serving shark fin by “October or November” — enough time to sell off remaining stock and serve banquets that have already booked menus with the soup.

”We’re going to take shark fin off the menu, once we’ve served off our stock,” said the employee, who declined to be identified by name. “We don’t want to be very high profile about this, to tell the world ‘we’re not serving shark fin soup.’ That is our own decision.”

The employee did not say why the restaurant chose to remove shark fin from the menu, though Griffin suspects the protest cost Sun Sui Wah business.

Clothing company Arc’teryx cancelled its Vancouver Christmas party at Sun Sui Wah after learning the restaurant sold shark fin, according Arc’teryx spokesperson Jo Salamon.

“Once we were made aware that shark fin soup was on the menu, we acted on principle and selected a different venue,” Salamon said in an email.

Shark fin soup is a Chinese delicacy, with single bowls going for more than $28 at Sun Sui Wah. The shark fin harvest has drawn the ire of animal rights activists, who say it is decimating a key ocean predator.

The sale of shark fin is legal in British Columbia, although municipalities including New Westminster, North Vancouver and Langley have moved to ban the product in their jurisdictions. While selling an endangered species is illegal in Canada, Griffin said, federal laws make it difficult for customs officials to determine whether a shark fin came from a protected species.

“The government has no idea when endangered shark fins are coming into the country,” said Griffin, adding it’s difficult to know how many restaurants have the product on their menus.

In fall 2012, Vision Vancouver Coun. Kerry Jang put forward a motion for a regional ban on the sale of shark fin, but appetite for a ban waned after Burnaby and Richmond voted down similar bylaws. Lower Mainland cities are now waiting on the results of a court challenge against a shark fin ban in Toronto.

Jang, who has been attacked by some members of the Chinese community for his stance on shark fin, said momentum is against the shark fin defenders.

“What really changed the minds of Sun Sui Wah management, I think, was when Peninsula, a new, high-end Chinese restaurant in Oakridge Mall, decided to voluntarily take shark fin off the menu,” he said.

“The owner wanted to reflect Canadian values and totally reprinted his menu without shark fin.”

Griffin said VADL members are talking with MLAs in hopes of gaining support for a law banning the sale of shark fin in British Columbia.

Sun Sui Wah is the second Vancouver restaurant to drop shark fin after facing picket lines outside its doors. Fortune Garden restaurant on Broadway was VADL’s first target, and a number of other restaurants have decided to stop serving shark fin voluntarily.

According to Griffin, VADL plans to approach Kirin Restaurant in the coming weeks, which has three locations in the Lower Mainland still serving shark fin. In the fall, they will send diners to Sun Sui Wah to confirm shark fin is no longer on offer.

“We told [Sun Sui Wah management] this is inevitable,” said Griffin. “Either restaurants are going to stop serving shark fin on their own or we’re going to have to protest them.”

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