Carrefour Halts Imports of Indonesian Frog Legs Following Shocking PETA Investigation

PETA Calls For Swift Government Action Against Frog-Meat Suppliers

Jakarta — French retail giant Carrefour has suspended orders from an Indonesian frog-meat supplier implicated in an eye-opening new PETA investigation that reveals how frogs are taken from their natural habitat and either suffocated or decapitated before being skinned—often while still alive—so that their legs and other body parts can be sold in European supermarkets.

“PETA applauds Carrefour for taking the first step to prevent vulnerable amphibians from being tormented and killed for their flesh,” says PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker. “PETA is asking Carrefour to implement a policy against selling any frog legs, regardless of origin, and we’re asking the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to crack down on facilities that violate Indonesia’s animal welfare and environmental laws.”

PETA investigators visited seven frog-meat operations in Indonesia and discovered that live frogs are kept in cramped sacks, sometimes for as long as two days. One worker sorting through the captured frogs slammed the live ones onto the ground and admitted that she didn’t want to take the time to separate the living frogs from the dead. Other workers used knives to cut off frogs’ heads and feet—some were hacked at repeatedly, while other frogs weren’t fully decapitated before workers ripped off their skin. Investigators also recorded that frogs’ mouths continued to open and close after decapitation and that their headless bodies were still jumping or moving minutes later.

The two species of frogs caught by workers—the fanged river frog and the crab-eating frog—are experiencing population declines. According to Eurostat, the EU imported an estimated 35,000 metric tons of frog legs between 2010 and 2022, equal to about 703 million to 1.75 billion frogs.

More than 50,000 people have joined PETA entities in writing to Carrefour to call on the company to stop selling frog legs permanently, regardless of their origin.

PETA—whose motto reads, in part, that “animals are not ours to eat or abuse in any other way”—opposes speciesism, a human-supremacist worldview. For more information, please visit PETAAsia.com or follow the group on X (previously Twitter), Facebook, or Instagram.

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