Very cool, thanks for doing this! It’s a big and neglected topic for sure.
A few months ago, I actually spent a day looking into farmed frog welfare (so slightly different to what you point at, which is the painful procedures done to wild and farmed frogs). I’ll post my exec summary below in case others are interested. You can see the full doc here.
Overall recommendation
Approximately 1 billion frogs are farmed each year for food, and there is a similar number alive on farms at any one time. Despite this, the vast majority of them (93%) are farmed in China, meaning it is very challenging to advocate for ways to improve their lives. The most promising approach would be via targeting US imports of frog legs, which amount to approximately 58-146 million frogs killed per year. However, there are very few organisations working on this and it’s not clear what leverage groups would have to affect US imports or sellers. Overall, I expect that there are more cost-effective ways to help other groups of very populous animals, such as chickens, fish or shrimp.
Executive Summary
I estimate there are around 1 billion frogs killed each year for food, with around 950 million alive at any one time.
See my summary spreadsheet here for calculations and assumptions around lifespan, mortality, etc.
FAO statistics suggest that 93% of frogs are farmed in China, 5% in Vietnam and approx 1% in Thailand.
Overwhelmingly, China is the most important country for frogs but the obvious challenge is that there are very limited ways to affect the Chinese animal industry.
This is especially true for frogs as most of them are consumed internally, rather than exported
That said, the US is a moderate importer of frogs, so there is some scope for advocacy. The size of US imports is approx. 58-146 million frogs killed per year.
The vast majority of these (99.9%) are imported as frog legs
For reference, there are approx. 380 million hens and 1.1 billion broiler chickens alive in the US at any one time.
Also for reference, there are 400 million fish alive in the US at any one time and my rough guess is that the US imports an additional 800 million farmed fish per year
The US import market seems more important than the EU market, as the latter is made up primarily of wild frogs caught in Indonesia, rather than farmed frogs.
This rests on the assumption that wild frogs have better lives than farmed frogs, which I feel relatively confident about.
The data is very limited and poor for most aspects of the frog farming industry so I am very uncertain about key factors like:
How long does it take for a frog to reach slaughter weight
I’ve seen disagreements between 2 months to 1 year, which would significantly change the number of frogs alive at any one time
To what extent are EU imports mostly wild-caught or farmed? Specifically thinking about how much of Indonesia’s frog production which is 80% of EU imports
How much of Chinese frogs are exported or consumed internally?
Ways you could help frogs
Support expansion of California-style live import bans to other states and cities (In Defense of Animals secured a ban on live imports of bullfrogs into California in 2023)
You could work with wildlife conservation groups that are worried about frog farms spreading diseases like chytrid fungus.
This would only be limited to live imports (less than 25% of total weight and approx. 2.5-5% of total frog numbers) - roughly 2-7 million frogs per year.
Advocate for federal/state import regulations based on environmental damages, zoonotic diseases and biosecurity
E.g. push for stricter biosecurity requirements around frog imports or support requirements for species labelling and origin documentation
This would definitely slow the industry down as it’s very informal currently
My recommendations would be:
If interested in exploring some advocacy around US imports, it would be worthwhile to speak with In Defense of Animals and the Bullfrog Action Group which worked on the California Imports Ban
Further research (I couldn’t find these very easily)
What percentage of US frog imports are live vs frozen?
Which states are the largest importers of frog legs?
Consider whether frogs are the biggest bang for the buck we can find to help animals or it might be easier and more effective to focus on other highly farmed species e.g. fish, shrimp or chickens.
I expect that there are currently much more cost-effective ways to help fish, shrimp or chickens due to existing nonprofit infrastructure, availability of information, non-Chinese markets and leverage over those supply chains.
Also, it’s unclear to me who are the right groups to work on frogs (basically no one is working on it now so it would need some effort to get this going)
Thanks for putting this together I’m actually working on understanding amphibians and reptile farming as part of my PhD research. From what I’ve seen, the data is rarely available in English — and the scale is unfortunately much more horrendous than most people realize. I have some primary data from 2017 and also published a paper on this not long ago: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2590332225001022?dgcid=coauthor
(unfortunately the main industry report was removed from China’s academy of engineering website no so long ago, although there should be plenty of info available in Chinese –– grey literature/government annoucements, etc)
If you (or anyone else here) are interested, we could maybe put together a short report to make a very basic estimation of the numbers of frogs being farmed in China, and the species involved.
Very cool, thanks for doing this! It’s a big and neglected topic for sure.
A few months ago, I actually spent a day looking into farmed frog welfare (so slightly different to what you point at, which is the painful procedures done to wild and farmed frogs). I’ll post my exec summary below in case others are interested. You can see the full doc here.
Overall recommendation
Approximately 1 billion frogs are farmed each year for food, and there is a similar number alive on farms at any one time. Despite this, the vast majority of them (93%) are farmed in China, meaning it is very challenging to advocate for ways to improve their lives. The most promising approach would be via targeting US imports of frog legs, which amount to approximately 58-146 million frogs killed per year. However, there are very few organisations working on this and it’s not clear what leverage groups would have to affect US imports or sellers. Overall, I expect that there are more cost-effective ways to help other groups of very populous animals, such as chickens, fish or shrimp.
Executive Summary
I estimate there are around 1 billion frogs killed each year for food, with around 950 million alive at any one time.
See my summary spreadsheet here for calculations and assumptions around lifespan, mortality, etc.
FAO statistics suggest that 93% of frogs are farmed in China, 5% in Vietnam and approx 1% in Thailand.
Overwhelmingly, China is the most important country for frogs but the obvious challenge is that there are very limited ways to affect the Chinese animal industry.
This is especially true for frogs as most of them are consumed internally, rather than exported
That said, the US is a moderate importer of frogs, so there is some scope for advocacy. The size of US imports is approx. 58-146 million frogs killed per year.
The vast majority of these (99.9%) are imported as frog legs
For reference, there are approx. 380 million hens and 1.1 billion broiler chickens alive in the US at any one time.
Also for reference, there are 400 million fish alive in the US at any one time and my rough guess is that the US imports an additional 800 million farmed fish per year
The US import market seems more important than the EU market, as the latter is made up primarily of wild frogs caught in Indonesia, rather than farmed frogs.
This rests on the assumption that wild frogs have better lives than farmed frogs, which I feel relatively confident about.
See Appendix on EU Imports for more information about the EU
The data is very limited and poor for most aspects of the frog farming industry so I am very uncertain about key factors like:
How long does it take for a frog to reach slaughter weight
I’ve seen disagreements between 2 months to 1 year, which would significantly change the number of frogs alive at any one time
To what extent are EU imports mostly wild-caught or farmed? Specifically thinking about how much of Indonesia’s frog production which is 80% of EU imports
How much of Chinese frogs are exported or consumed internally?
Ways you could help frogs
Support expansion of California-style live import bans to other states and cities (In Defense of Animals secured a ban on live imports of bullfrogs into California in 2023)
You could work with wildlife conservation groups that are worried about frog farms spreading diseases like chytrid fungus.
This would only be limited to live imports (less than 25% of total weight and approx. 2.5-5% of total frog numbers) - roughly 2-7 million frogs per year.
Advocate for federal/state import regulations based on environmental damages, zoonotic diseases and biosecurity
E.g. push for stricter biosecurity requirements around frog imports or support requirements for species labelling and origin documentation
This would definitely slow the industry down as it’s very informal currently
My recommendations would be:
If interested in exploring some advocacy around US imports, it would be worthwhile to speak with In Defense of Animals and the Bullfrog Action Group which worked on the California Imports Ban
Further research (I couldn’t find these very easily)
What percentage of US frog imports are live vs frozen?
Which states are the largest importers of frog legs?
Consider whether frogs are the biggest bang for the buck we can find to help animals or it might be easier and more effective to focus on other highly farmed species e.g. fish, shrimp or chickens.
I expect that there are currently much more cost-effective ways to help fish, shrimp or chickens due to existing nonprofit infrastructure, availability of information, non-Chinese markets and leverage over those supply chains.
Also, it’s unclear to me who are the right groups to work on frogs (basically no one is working on it now so it would need some effort to get this going)
Thanks for putting this together I’m actually working on understanding amphibians and reptile farming as part of my PhD research. From what I’ve seen, the data is rarely available in English — and the scale is unfortunately much more horrendous than most people realize. I have some primary data from 2017 and also published a paper on this not long ago: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2590332225001022?dgcid=coauthor
(unfortunately the main industry report was removed from China’s academy of engineering website no so long ago, although there should be plenty of info available in Chinese –– grey literature/government annoucements, etc)
If you (or anyone else here) are interested, we could maybe put together a short report to make a very basic estimation of the numbers of frogs being farmed in China, and the species involved.