said they would eat the dish if served to them, with the most popular justifications being to “avoid food waste” or to “show respect for their host”. A 2018 WildAid report mentioned Thailand as an emerging market for shark fin soup, citing a 2017 survey where 57% of urban Thai respondents consumed the dish, most commonly at weddings, restaurants, and business meetings. Ethical and environmental concerns Shark fins used in the soup are the cartilaginous dorsal, pectoral and caudal fins. These are regularly harvested by a process known as shark finning, which takes only the fins and discards the carcass, alive or dead. Overfishing poses a major threat to the world's shark populations. Some groups, such as Fins Attached, Shark Savers, IUCN, Shark Angels, Shark Whisperer and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, discourage consumption of the soup due to concerns with the world's shark population and how sharks are inhumanely finned alive and returned to the ocean, unable to swim, hunt or survive. The prevalence of shark finning and the sustainability of shark species are both debated. As of 2011, major hotel operators such as Marriott International, The Peninsula Hotels and Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts stopped serving shark fin soup in favor of offering sustainable seafood. The largest supermarket chains in Singapore - Cold Storage and NTUC FairPrice - have stopped selling shark fins, citing sustainability concerns. Hong Kong Disneyland dropped the soup from its menu after it could not find a sustainable source. Malaysia's Natural Resources and Environment Ministry banned shark fin soup from official functions in a commitment to the Malaysian Nature Society to conserve the shark species. In the United States, Hawaii, Washington, Oregon, California, Guam, and the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands have banned the sale and possession of shark fins, effectively eliminating the availability of the soup. Illinois, which had been a large importer of shark fins, was the fifth U.S. state, and the first non-Pacific state, to implement a ban on shark fin trade. In 2011, U.S. President Barack Obama signed the Shark Conservation Act, closing loopholes used to obtain shark fins. In October 2011, California governor Jerry Brown, citing the cruelty of finning and potential threats to the environment and commercial fishing, signed Assembly Bill 376, banning the possession and sale of detached shark fins. Two Chinese American groups challenged the law in federal court, arguing among other things that it was