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?
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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.