Thank you so much for this important post. This could be a low-hanging fruit. And I hope I can shed some light on where the fruit trees might be located.
I am not sure about the non-Asian countries that export frog legs to Europe, but I quite certain that it’s pointless to try to directly convince/force processing factories in Asia to kill frogs in more humane ways. The way to go is to affect how the demand side behaves.
And I think it’s not the best strategy to try to use education/adovcacy to try to reduce frog leg consumption. At least not as a standalone strategy. But it could be part of other work like corporate engagement and lobbying.
I also think corporate engagement work, like the Carrehour win PETA seems to be associated with, won’t have a significant effect on the number of frogs beings raised and killed inhumanely. I believe the reason is that the demand is simply way higher than supply (and prices are like super high because of that), meaning that whatever amount of frog legs that Carrefour gives up would be picked up by someone else. This is pretty much regardless of how large of a purchaser Carrefour are, because other supermarkets and restaurants can’t buy enough anyway, they would just likely pick those up.
I think the way to go is to get European countries (main target would be France) or EU at large to ban frog legs that were killed inhumanely. And I think a strategy that can be tried is to get charities other than PETA to do basically the same investigations and then protests.
This is really helpful and thoughtful. I agree with you that bans are probably the way to go but I worry they may be difficult to enforce. I think importers could easily circumvent restrictions through relabelling. There’s already widespread mislabelling of frog species—though, to be fair, much of it doesn’t appear to be intentional.
I think Switzerland’s new welfare labelling law will be interesting to watch. Many of the practices now required to be documented are already banned locally, so the law will primarily affect imports. It may offer useful lessons on enforcement (or lack thereof).
An element worth considering is whether EU countries are (legally) competent to unilaterally impose import bans for products outside EU. In the EU, certain campaigns for national import bans have stranded once NGOs realised their country could simply not impose it (e.g. Belgian judiciary stopped the Flemish import ban on horse meat from South-America). At first sight, I would think EU law allows national bans for frogs (ChatGPT said no but I disagree).
If EU countries are not competent, it could still be a good lobbying priority at EU level as the ban does not seem to hurt local farmers or producers, but only local economy (mainly importers and restaurants so turnover should be low i think?). As far as i know (correct me if i am wrong) there is no precedent of an EU import ban on animal products that was not inspired/preceeded by national bans? I think the seals products ban was first in other countries (like Belgium)?
Thank you so much for this important post. This could be a low-hanging fruit. And I hope I can shed some light on where the fruit trees might be located.
I am not sure about the non-Asian countries that export frog legs to Europe, but I quite certain that it’s pointless to try to directly convince/force processing factories in Asia to kill frogs in more humane ways. The way to go is to affect how the demand side behaves.
And I think it’s not the best strategy to try to use education/adovcacy to try to reduce frog leg consumption. At least not as a standalone strategy. But it could be part of other work like corporate engagement and lobbying.
I also think corporate engagement work, like the Carrehour win PETA seems to be associated with, won’t have a significant effect on the number of frogs beings raised and killed inhumanely. I believe the reason is that the demand is simply way higher than supply (and prices are like super high because of that), meaning that whatever amount of frog legs that Carrefour gives up would be picked up by someone else. This is pretty much regardless of how large of a purchaser Carrefour are, because other supermarkets and restaurants can’t buy enough anyway, they would just likely pick those up.
I think the way to go is to get European countries (main target would be France) or EU at large to ban frog legs that were killed inhumanely. And I think a strategy that can be tried is to get charities other than PETA to do basically the same investigations and then protests.
This is really helpful and thoughtful. I agree with you that bans are probably the way to go but I worry they may be difficult to enforce. I think importers could easily circumvent restrictions through relabelling. There’s already widespread mislabelling of frog species—though, to be fair, much of it doesn’t appear to be intentional.
I think Switzerland’s new welfare labelling law will be interesting to watch. Many of the practices now required to be documented are already banned locally, so the law will primarily affect imports. It may offer useful lessons on enforcement (or lack thereof).
Insightful strategy analysis!
An element worth considering is whether EU countries are (legally) competent to unilaterally impose import bans for products outside EU. In the EU, certain campaigns for national import bans have stranded once NGOs realised their country could simply not impose it (e.g. Belgian judiciary stopped the Flemish import ban on horse meat from South-America). At first sight, I would think EU law allows national bans for frogs (ChatGPT said no but I disagree).
If EU countries are not competent, it could still be a good lobbying priority at EU level as the ban does not seem to hurt local farmers or producers, but only local economy (mainly importers and restaurants so turnover should be low i think?). As far as i know (correct me if i am wrong) there is no precedent of an EU import ban on animal products that was not inspired/preceeded by national bans? I think the seals products ban was first in other countries (like Belgium)?