Hello! Today’s post is the second installment about frog legs. Not a food review (although I will say that from personal experience, frog legs are generally bland, and the texture is between chicken and fish, which is something I find a bit disconcerting), but a review on some implications the frog leg trade has on the natural world.

Wildlife trade brings to mind many consequences: illegal poaching, unsustainable harvesting, animal rights issues etc. Another consequence of the issue that I never considered until I started reading about frogs was how the wildlife trade enables the spread of infectious diseases which are often fatal for entire species.

Frogs are extremely sensitive to their environment because their skin is permeable, so any contact with pollutants or toxins can be absorbed into their bodies. Although this characteristic of frogs can also explain their ecological importance (which I may discuss in another post) it also explains why they are so vulnerable to infectious diseases. In particular, the Batrachochytrium dendrobatidis (Bd) fungus has been accused for causing the extinction of 90 amphibian species and the endangerment of at least another 491 species.

Bd is a pathogen of the skin, so the fact that frog legs are skinned and frozen before being shipped should be enough to handle the issue, right? Not quite. Since frogs are also shipped live in the pet trade, there is a high chance that the virus can be transmitted by live, infected frogs. Also, Bd is able to be transmitted via water, and some species can act as carriers of Bd without showing any symptoms of it. The American Bullfrog is one such species. This is troubling as American Bullfrogs are the second most traded amphibian in the world, and make up a large part of the species used in the frog leg industry. In Jurong Frog Farm in Singapore, this is also the species that is reared for consumption.

We now go back to the question: do we stop eating frog legs? If the industry has the ability to decemate many amphibian species across the globe, should we ban its consumption altogether? Globally, imported frog legs are valued at US$40 million annually, but is that worth the ecological damage?

From my previous post, it is clear that there is a lack of knowledge and regulation of the frog leg trade. It is thus hard to discern the most effective way to counter these impacts, as the degree of control and enforcement required is not clearly understood. Not to ribbit (repeat) myself lol, but our decisions as individuals can impact the environment in some way, but seeing its convuluted and interconnected nature, it is hard to come to a simple conclusion about what we should do. Hopefully, the delays in conservation of frogs is not exacerbated by the lags in research and implimentation.