An IBAMA agent received an extrajudicial notification from the company Bom Peixe Indústria e Comércio for having made a post on its social networks pointing out problems involved in the consumption of dogfish, the generic name under which sharks and rays are sold.
“What you are seeing in the photo are thousands of shark fins seized by Ibama in the state of Pará, the result of one of the cruelest human practices against animals”, said the post by agent Wallace Lopes, director of Asibama-TO (Association of IBAMA Tocantins servers).
In a series of tweets, Lopes talked about how Brazil participates in shark fishing, including those threatened with extinction.
Briefly, the fins of these fish are highly valued in the eastern trade. The meat, however, does not go to the same market. And that’s where Brazil comes in. The country is said to be the world’s biggest consumer of shark meat, usually under the generic “dogfish” label and at affordable prices.
Among the package photos published by Lopes to exemplify the sale of dogfish, there was a package from Bom Peixe.
In the notification, the company says that Bom Peixe’s association with the practices mentioned in the agent’s publication is “absolutely untrue, conveys misinformation and does not correspond to reality”.
According to the company, this is an attack on the reputation of the brand, which, according to the document sent to Ibama’s Internal Affairs, would adopt “strict control of traceability, origin and quality”.
THE Sheet tried for more than a week to contact the company, both by phone and email. No messages were answered and telephone contacts were also unsuccessful.
The report asked which species are sold under the “dogfish” label, whether the identification appears on the company’s packaging and who the company’s suppliers are. THE Sheet also tried to contact Bom Peixe’s lawyers, again without success.
Bom Peixe has two fines for environmental infractions, both in the amount of R$9,000. In 2011, the company was fined by Ibama for totally or partially false/misleading/missing information in the official environmental systems. In 2016, the fine was for failing to register in the Federal Technical Registry of Potentially Polluting Activities and Users of Environmental Resources.
THE Sheet also questioned the company about the fines, but received no response.
The IBAMA agent ended up removing the original post from the air and redoing it. In the new publication, he returned to show dogfish packaging, but hid the names of the companies.
Ibama’s internal affairs department, in turn, considered that the matter was not within its area of competence, considering that the agent, in the networks, manifests himself as a citizen, not as an Ibama inspector.
Lopes says he was surprised to receive the notification and to see that it had been sent to Ibama’s Internal Affairs, which he considers an attempt to intimidate and the company to harm him professionally.
“In the original messages I don’t even mention the name of Bom Peixe. I just presented a package, like the ones we find in any supermarket, to show that companies in the sector label shark meat as dogfish, and that’s a fact,” he said. .
In any case, says the agent, the original post was deleted to avoid further disputes.
extinction risk
Fishing is threatening the world’s sharks, an animal that has inhabited Earth’s seas for more than 400 million years and has survived several mass extinctions.
The cruel practice cited by the IBAMA agent in his series of posts is called finning. It involves the removal of the valued fins — which are usually destined for an oriental soup that symbolizes abundance — and the subsequent disposal of the animal’s body — sometimes still alive — in the sea. The action is already prohibited in several places around the world, including Brazil (since 1998).
After the fins are removed, the shark’s head is usually cut off. With this type of action, it becomes more difficult to verify, from the “rest” of the animal, the species in question.
The consequence of this is that you don’t know what “dog” you have in your hands. Brazilian studies that carried out DNA analysis of samples in different markets found high percentages —in general, above 50%— of specimens belonging to species with some degree of threat of extinction.
With this, it is worth mentioning that despite the prominence that finning receives, the consumption of shark and ray meat has been more profitable and more voluminous. According to an international study by the NGO WWF, from 2012 to 2019, while the fin trade moved US$ 1.5 billion, the meat trade raised US$ 2.6 billion. The same survey points to Brazil as the leader among the shark meat importing countries.
Research published in 2021 in the journal Nature points to a sharp decline of 71% in populations of sharks and rays in the oceans. The main reason for this was the pressure exerted by overfishing (ie overfishing).
According to the same Nature survey, all 31 species of oceanic sharks have seen their risk of extinction increase since 1980.
One of the points that increase the risk to shark species is late sexual maturity, that is, they are animals that take time to be able to reproduce, and low fecundity, which translates into few offspring.
Another concern is that sharks are animals at the top of the food chain, like large predators. The decline in their populations, therefore, can have profound effects on aquatic ecosystems.
In addition, elevated mercury levels have already been found in research related to dogfish meat. The FDA (the American drug and food regulatory agency, equivalent to the Brazilian Anvisa) states that pregnant women, breastfeeding women and children aged 1 to 11 years should avoid shark meat.
