Foodpanda has signed a pledge with the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) to have shark fin-related dishes removed from its platform ahead of Chinese New Year.
The food delivery company will join WWF’s ‘Say No To Shark Fin’ campaign, which will see them remove any shark dishes on their platform, and no longer allow any new restaurants to include this in their menu's as a part of its sustainable food pillar in sustainability.
According to Wild Aid, an estimated 100 million sharks are killed every year with 73m of those fins are used for shark’s soup. In a 2017 World Wide Fund for Nature (Singapore) study, results showed that 82% of Singaporean respondents had not consumed shark fin for at least a year. Furthermore, the demand for this once-popular delicacy has dropped by more than half over the past decade, with many in the younger generation viewing consumption of shark’s fin ‘unethical’.
"We're delighted to be part of WWF's "Say No To Shark Fin" campaign,” said Laura Kantor, head of marketing and sustainability lead for Singapore. “Customer experience is our top priority, and while we aspire to give our customer's as much choice as possible, we wanted to support this important initiative, in order to protect an endangered species from going extinct.”
“Feedback from our customers has already been very positive, and we hope that the other delivery companies can also follow suit"
Foodpanda is also working together with packaging companies and top restaurant chains to explore ways eradicate the use of plastic packaging and replace this with bio-degradable alternatives. It also has an ‘opt-out’ option on its app that enables customers to choose to not receive cutleries when buying from any of the twenty vendors on its platform.
The Drum spoke to Kantor and managing director Luc Andreani in 2017 on Foodpanda's rebranding on its fifth year anniversary.