Frog leg feast has scientist shopping mad

THERE’S a town in eastern France called Vittel and every year around the beginning of May it holds a festival called the Foire aux Grenouilles.

There’s lots of entertainment and cultural stuff at the festival but it’s centred on a celebration of frogs — or, more precisely, on eating frogs’ legs.

A group of US based international wildlife conservation organisations has recently issued a report that attacks this French festival. The report is called Canapes to Extinction — The International Trade in Frog’s Legs and its Ecological Impact. It’s the first comprehensive study of its kind and it has come up with some strange facts.