Are frog's legs a delicacy or is it animal cruelty?

DW (English)

Eating frog's legs is popular in France, where almost 4,000 tons are consumed yearly. But frogs are protected in the EU. So, where do the frog legs come from?

Transcript

00:00Frog legs are a classic dish of French cuisine.

00:04Everyone here has already had frog legs at least once.

00:08It's a very well-known feature of French gastronomy.

00:11They're served in high-end gastronomy, or also as a simple dish made at home.

00:17You can't be afraid of getting your hands dirty, but it's worth it.

00:21It's a party snack, and it's very good.

00:23The French are crazy about frog legs.

00:26They consume nearly 4,000 tons per year, often simply prepared in a pan with butter and parsley.

00:32But no matter how much the French love their frog legs,

00:35many if not most of the tidbits are tainted by uncertainty.

00:40There's hardly any way to trace where these legs come from.

00:45We'll explain how frog farms can help solve the problem,

00:48and we'll show you how to prepare frog legs.

00:55Paul Bocuse's restaurant in Lyon is an institution of French cuisine.

00:59Of course, they offer frog legs on the menu.

01:03Chef Olivier Cuvin has created his own recipe.

01:06He got the idea for it while looking at the ponds near the restaurant.

01:11Frog legs taste a little bland, so they have to be well-seasoned.

01:17As tradition dictates, he first sautés them with fresh parsley.

01:21He has his own method for judging the frog's quality.

01:25You look at the color of the bone.

01:27You can see if it had time to grow, so the frog could develop well.

01:34The restaurant gets its frog legs from a farm in Piolat, in the south of France.

01:39Patrice Francois was the first to create a breeding farm in 2010.

01:45Here you have a pool of tadpoles.

01:48He dreams of creating a frog breeding industry in France.

01:51At present, only three farms are producing frogs for consumption.

01:56I think that it will be more and more difficult to find them in nature.

01:59Only breeding will be able to counter this to a degree.

02:04The vast majority of frog legs eaten in France are imported,

02:07which is problematic for several reasons.

02:12We went to five supermarkets and found out that the packaged frogs

02:15always have the same countries of origin, Vietnam and Indonesia.

02:21In early 2024, a group of environmental organizations and scientists

02:25signed a letter to French President Emmanuel Macron

02:28to demand better protection for frogs abroad in accordance with the strict French rules.

02:34The international trade is not subject to any kind of monitoring.

02:39There's no way to trace the origin of the frog legs,

02:42how they're caught in their natural habitats, or how they're slaughtered.

02:49The organizations that sent the letter denounce the killing of frogs without putting them to sleep.

02:55They are also concerned about the disappearance of certain species in Asia

02:59because of their being hunted for the frog leg trade.

03:03Frogs are the best friends of both farmers and doctors.

03:09What about the mosquitoes that carry diseases like dengue fever and malaria?

03:17Scientists hope that permits will be made compulsory for the import and export of frogs.

03:23Back at the frog farm, the more than 130,000 frogs in the water-filled basins put on a real concert.

03:32These frogs are about one month old.

03:36The biggest part of raising them is teaching them to eat stationary food, food that's not moving.

03:46Patrice uses a special kind of frog that was trained to eat fish pellets in the 1990s by French agronomists.

03:57It's the Rivant 92 variety of the Rana ridibunda, a species of frog classified as domestic.

04:05After 8 to 12 months of breeding, the frogs are put to sleep by lowering the temperature and then slaughtered.

04:12Patrice sells his products to restaurants.

04:15At the Paul Bocuse restaurant, Patrice's frogs are served with smoked carp and blanched garlic.

04:21The last step is a homemade sauce made with watercress.

04:25For the finishing touch, we add our sauce in front of the customer.

04:29We'd never offer this à la carte dish at Monsieur Paul Bocuse using frogs imported from abroad.

04:35It's important to us that it's a French product subject to regulation and transparency on where it comes from.

04:42But farmed frogs alone cannot meet the demand in France, so frog legs are destined to remain a luxury food.

04:49If import regulations are tightened in the future, many French people will have to make do with less of their beloved delicacy.

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