Its worse than I thought. Frogs are cut open, skinned and have their snouts and rear legs cut off with scissors or a blade while still alive. It seems the primary reason for this is because freshness is perceived as important for taste, although I couldn’t find much information. Truly horrifying indeed.
“Freshness” being perceived as important for taste is definitely true in China. In some wet markets in China, frog vendors try to skin the frogs first and keep the head intact, and only cut the heads off when a customer verifies that that frog is alive, and then buys the frog.
(You might already be aware but I think that website you linked is just LLM-generated articles. They’re quite difficult to avoid on search engines these days. The information might still be accurate of course.)
I was not aware. Thank you for flagging that. I just did some more research and I’m not able to find more credible information about why they are not killed first. I’m glad @Fai was able to corroborate “freshness” being a driver in the Chinese context but it’s now unclear to me why they are not killed first for European imports.
To be “fair”, some processing factories in Asia who exports to Europe cut the heads of the frogs first, so those frogs suffer way less (but still horrifically).
I am not sure why there is a high variety of methods for killing frogs for the same product. But I guess it might be because different factories just try to find different ways for killing frogs in the quickest ways, and it happens that it largely depends on their workers’ hand skills and their equipment?
This comment prompted some further research. It seems the order of operations varies significantly between facilities and even between workers in the same facility:
Skinning → leg removal → decapitation—Some facilities skin frogs while fully conscious, then cut off legs, then decapitate
Partial decapitation → leg removal → skinning—Workers “hack at” heads without full severance, then remove legs
Leg removal → decapitation—Direct leg removal from conscious frogs, followed by decapitation
Decapitation → skinning → leg removal—This appears to be less common in commercial operations
The variation in methods is concerning, but even more disturbing is what happens regardless of the sequence chosen. Another thing I uncovered was that there is weirdly strong evidence that frogs can remain conscious after decapitation.
Mammals lose consciousness within 10-20 seconds of decapitation when blood pressure drops and oxygen delivery ceases. Amphibians, adapted for low-oxygen aquatic environments, respond differently. When oxygen is cut off, frog brain cells reduce their metabolism by 80-90% through “channel arrest”—shutting down ion channels to conserve energy. This metabolic suppression allows neurons to maintain electrical activity using residual oxygen and stored ATP in the severed head for 10-15 minutes. This physiological adaptation, beneficial for surviving in oxygen-poor ponds, means frogs likely remain conscious long after decapitation rather than losing awareness within seconds like mammals.
So even facilities that decapitate first—thinking it’s more humane—likely aren’t preventing suffering as intended. AVMA guidelines state that decapitation must be followed by “pithing” (the physical destruction of the brain and/or spinal cord by inserting a sharp probe and scrambling the nervous tissue). This procedure is not documented in any commercial operations
Wow, this is completely horrifying. Why are they not killed first? Not that that wouldn’t be horrifying too, but obviously this is worse.
Its worse than I thought. Frogs are cut open, skinned and have their snouts and rear legs cut off with scissors or a blade while still alive. It seems the primary reason for this is because freshness is perceived as important for taste, although I couldn’t find much information. Truly horrifying indeed.
“Freshness” being perceived as important for taste is definitely true in China. In some wet markets in China, frog vendors try to skin the frogs first and keep the head intact, and only cut the heads off when a customer verifies that that frog is alive, and then buys the frog.
(You might already be aware but I think that website you linked is just LLM-generated articles. They’re quite difficult to avoid on search engines these days. The information might still be accurate of course.)
I was not aware. Thank you for flagging that. I just did some more research and I’m not able to find more credible information about why they are not killed first. I’m glad @Fai was able to corroborate “freshness” being a driver in the Chinese context but it’s now unclear to me why they are not killed first for European imports.
To be “fair”, some processing factories in Asia who exports to Europe cut the heads of the frogs first, so those frogs suffer way less (but still horrifically).
I am not sure why there is a high variety of methods for killing frogs for the same product. But I guess it might be because different factories just try to find different ways for killing frogs in the quickest ways, and it happens that it largely depends on their workers’ hand skills and their equipment?
This comment prompted some further research. It seems the order of operations varies significantly between facilities and even between workers in the same facility:
Skinning → leg removal → decapitation—Some facilities skin frogs while fully conscious, then cut off legs, then decapitate
Partial decapitation → leg removal → skinning—Workers “hack at” heads without full severance, then remove legs
Leg removal → decapitation—Direct leg removal from conscious frogs, followed by decapitation
Decapitation → skinning → leg removal—This appears to be less common in commercial operations
The variation in methods is concerning, but even more disturbing is what happens regardless of the sequence chosen. Another thing I uncovered was that there is weirdly strong evidence that frogs can remain conscious after decapitation.
Mammals lose consciousness within 10-20 seconds of decapitation when blood pressure drops and oxygen delivery ceases. Amphibians, adapted for low-oxygen aquatic environments, respond differently. When oxygen is cut off, frog brain cells reduce their metabolism by 80-90% through “channel arrest”—shutting down ion channels to conserve energy. This metabolic suppression allows neurons to maintain electrical activity using residual oxygen and stored ATP in the severed head for 10-15 minutes. This physiological adaptation, beneficial for surviving in oxygen-poor ponds, means frogs likely remain conscious long after decapitation rather than losing awareness within seconds like mammals.
So even facilities that decapitate first—thinking it’s more humane—likely aren’t preventing suffering as intended. AVMA guidelines state that decapitation must be followed by “pithing” (the physical destruction of the brain and/or spinal cord by inserting a sharp probe and scrambling the nervous tissue). This procedure is not documented in any commercial operations