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Indybay Feature

Gilroy Garlic Festival: No More Frog Legs!

by via Save the Frogs
Please help us get frog legs off the menu at the internationally-acclaimed Gilroy Garlic Festival! Send the letter below to the festival's Executive Director Mr. Brian Bowe. Thank you for helping SAVE THE FROGS! and significantly diminishing the environmentally-damaging frog legs trade.
aisyah-nasywa-ula-7-indonesia.jpg
Please prohibit frog leg sales at the Gilroy Garlic Festival


Dear Mr. Brian Bowe and the Gilroy Garlic Festival,

I am writing to request you please prohibit frog leg sales at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Frogs worldwide are rapidly disappearing and California is home to 17 endangered amphibian species. Over a billion frogs are removed from the wild each year for use as food and several hundred million frogs are farm-raised for food. Most of these farm-raised frogs are non-native American Bullfrogs, which are imported into California by the millions each year. The bullfrogs are voracious predators of California's native wildlife and have very high rates of infectious diseases, including chytridiomycosis, which is responsible for the extinction of nearly 100 amphibian species worldwide.

While people may enjoy eating frog legs, in America they are a novelty, not a necessary food item. History shows that humans eat frogs to near extinction: in France it is illegal to eat a native frog because they ate most of theirs; now they import them from Indonesia, endangering that country's amphibian populations. Gilroy was once home to large populations of California Red-Legged Frogs (our official state amphibian) but unfortunately the California gold miners nearly ate them to extinction and now that species is on the federal Endangered Species List.

Let's not have one of California's most famous festivals or its attendees be unwitting participants in the extinction of any more frog species. Please take the environmentally responsible step and place an immediate prohibition on frog leg sales at the Gilroy Garlic Festival. You can learn more about the problems with frog legs at http://savethefrogs.com/frog-legs and email contact [at] savethefrogs.com if you would like a SAVE THE FROGS! informational table set up at the festival to provide free education to garlic-loving kids and parents.

We can have both garlic and frogs, but let's have our frogs alive and in the wild for future generations to appreciate. Thank you for helping SAVE THE FROGS!

Submit letter online:
http://org2.salsalabs.com/o/6000/p/dia/action3/common/public/?action_KEY=18134#

Garlic festival contact info:

Gilroy Garlic Festival Association, Inc.
Mailing Address – PO Box 2311 . Gilroy CA 95021
Street Address – 7473 Monterey Street . Gilroy CA 95020
clove [at] gilroygarlicfestival.com
408.842.1625
408.842.7337 – fax


Frog art by Aisyah Nasywa Ula, Age 7, Indonesia


Save the Frogs
http://www.savethefrogs.com/
Add Your Comments

Comments (Hide Comments)
by Thank you!
Thank you for helping us get frog legs off the menu of the Gilroy Garlic Festival. The frog legs trade is a huge contributor to amphibian population declines, but together we can educate people about the problem and drastically reduce the number of frogs killed each year for food. Please read http://savethefrogs.com/frog-legs and ask your friends to send their letter to the Gilroy Garlic Festival at:
http://savethefrogs.com/gilroy

Thank you!
Kerry Kriger, Ph.D.
SAVE THE FROGS!
http://savethefrogs.com
by kai
Why dont you request that ALL animals be taken off the menu? Eating any kind of meat is environmentally damaging, choosing frogs as a campaign focus is silly and irrellevant in the broader context of animal liberation
by jains dont nit pick
i am not sure what kai has against frogs, but i myself dont think they should be killed.

while this campaign may not be coming from an animal rights group with broad goals, the action itself is similar to other actions that animal rights groups participate in.

the bacon festival in san jose is protested, for example, and to me this also feels very similar in some ways to protesting marine parks for the release of orcas.

if we want people to quit eating meat all together i think we need to be realistic about our goals and the time frame it will take to accomplish them.
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