Warning: This story contains images of dead animals.
Behind the counter at a San Francisco seafood market, a worker picks up a yellow mallet and proceeds to bludgeon a live turtle before hacking into its shell with a meat cleaver. Its legs flinch as the blade strikes.
Video from live-animal shops shows rubber-smocked employees beheading frogs without stunning them first. The grainy footage shows dead fish floating in tanks alongside others that look like they’re dying, conscious frogs getting stuffed into a plastic bag, fish gasping on ice.
The scenes, shot last fall at markets throughout the city, were recorded by a vegan activist group to spur city officials to crack down on what it calls clear violations of animal cruelty laws.
Washington, D.C.-based Animal Outlook began investigating the Bay Area markets three years ago, presenting graphic footage of apparent abuses at 18 stores in San Jose, Oakland, and San Francisco — to little avail.
Animal Outlook director Ben Williamson said he’s aware of one resulting enforcement incident: a single citation by the San Francisco Animal Care and Control in response to his group’s findings in 2022.
Frustrated by the lack of meaningful action, the group revisited some of the stores a few months ago, where an undercover investigator documented some of the same alleged abuses “hidden in plain sight.”
“Frogs are still being decapitated while alive, turtles are still being smashed with mallets, fish are still being bludgeoned on the head,” Williamson said. “And this is happening every day in San Francisco.”
Violations of state animal welfare laws range from fines to jail time, depending on whether they’re prosecuted as misdemeanors or felonies.
The practices in Animal Outlook’s footage appear to flout state and local laws, Williamson said. Yet San Francisco officials have repeatedly said they don’t have the capacity to promptly enforce them.
Animal Care and Control spokesperson Deb Campbell said that “while the allegations are shocking,” footage presented by a third party isn’t enough. The agency “can only act on what we see,” she told The Standard. “We cannot cite based on videos.”
Campbell added: “Our animal control officers respond to constituent complaints and concerns as quickly as we can with the resources we have available.”
Those resources include 14 officers who respond to emergencies from 6 a.m. to midnight every day and field about 10,000 service calls a year, she told The Standard by email.
‘One of those hiding-in-plain-sight things’
When Animal Outlook presented its initial findings at a public hearing about a 18 months after its first probe into the local markets, Amy Corso, deputy director of Animal Care and Control, said the agency is constrained because it’s not staffed by sworn peace officers, which means its team members have to witness an offense in order to cite it.
As such, Corso told the San Francisco Animal Commission at an Aug. 10, 2023, meeting, “they have been unsuccessful in offering the same general animal cruelty protections to animals in live-animal markets.”
The agency “has not seen anyone successfully prosecute live-animal cruelty under current laws,” she continued. “Courts are backed up with serious felonies and violent crimes, so these are not always seen as a priority.”
The inaction stems in part from the city’s reading of California’s cruelty statute, Williamson said — an interpretation contested by Animal Outlook and questioned by at least one local animal welfare expert.
At the same 2023 commission meeting, Corso explained that her agency saw the state’s animal cruelty law as exempting animals like the fish, frogs, and turtles in so-called wet markets. Animal Outlook, however, says the language of the law protects “every dumb creature.”
“Legislative change is therefore unnecessary,” Animal Outlook attorney Jareb Gleckel wrote in a letter sent to the city days after the commission hearing. “Rather, [Animal Control] should begin actively pursuing charges for live-market cruelty under Section 597.”
Matthew Liebman, who chairs the University of San Francisco School of Law’s Justice for Animals program, agrees with the broader interpretation. He said he’s unsure why the city would downplay video as a valid reason to delve deeper.
“My understanding is that Animal Control officers are basically animal cops and can go in and enforce the law when they know it’s been broken and have credible evidence, which I think a video would be,” he said by phone Sunday. “This is one of those hiding-in-plain-sight things, where I think if they went down there in person, they’d pretty easily see for themselves that violations are happening.”
When The Standard visited animal markets on Ocean Avenue in Ingleside and on Irving and Noriega streets in the Sunset, similar conditions were on full display. A live frog with its intestine bubbling out sat in a green bin full of other frogs. A fish repeatedly opened and closed its mouth in a bubbling tank bobbing with upturned carcasses. A softshell turtle, beside some that were some blood-spattered, lay on its back in a crowded bin.
California’s live-market statute — which prohibits dismembering animals while they’re alive, or confining them in injurious ways — is less punitive than the general cruelty legislation, with consequences that range from written warnings to small fines and mandated animal welfare education.
It’s unclear to what extent the city has pursued the mandated-classes route of enforcement, he said. Animal Care and Control did not immediately respond to The Standard’s request for data about that kind of regulation.
‘There are ways to limit suffering’
Policing live markets has been politically challenging for decades.
Since animal rights groups began sounding the alarm about wet markets in the 1990s, Liebman said, there’s been concern about the appearance of singling out predominantly Asian establishments.
Slaughtering violations aren’t limited to Chinatown — similar abuses have been alleged at Fisherman’s Wharf and a host of other businesses in the city and beyond.
David Ho, a consultant for the San Francisco Chinese Chamber of Commerce, said he found Animal Outlook’s approach offensive.
“I’m not making excuses for my community,” he said, “but we haven’t had a town hall requested by the accusers, or by public health officials or Animal Control.”
Though Animal Outlook investigates cruelty at factory farms and other similar establishments, Ho said its approach in San Francisco seems to single out Chinese-owned businesses.
“You know, we’re not Hayes Valley, we’re not Noe Valley,” he said. “Chinatown has 85% of people living in poverty, we have 900 small businesses, barely any chain stores, and we’re relying on this ecosystem to survive.”
Ho says he believes there’s a way to balance culture with advocacy interests. When complaints were lodged about Americans with Disabilities Act violations in Chinatown, he said, he brought merchants to the table with disability rights activists to work things out. When concerns arose about awnings in Chinatown posing fire risks, he helped small businesses come into compliance.
“You have to dangle the carrot before you dangle the stick,” he said. “The animal rights folks, they could have come to us first, and the fact that they didn’t, and that we didn’t hear anything from any relevant city department, is very offensive.”
With a new mayor and new supervisors, Ho said, he looks forward to having a conversation about animal welfare and maybe to roll out a pilot program with a few wet markets.
“I see that side,” Liebman said. “I think, and I hope, there’s a way to approach this without ‘othering,’ and to respect cultural differences while protecting animals from preventable suffering.”
What, then, is the proper way to kill frogs, fish, and turtles?
“That’s a tricky question,” Liebman said. “But there are ways to limit suffering.”
Lower consumer demand for frogs and turtles means there’s less infrastructure to kill them, as opposed to mechanisms for more mainstream livestock, like chickens and cows.
For fish, he said, the industry standard is to render them unconscious with a single head strike, a method known as “percussive stunning.” For frogs, it’s to electrocute the entire body, because the way the animals take in oxygen allows them to retain consciousness in the head even after it’s been cut off.
That’s legally speaking. On a personal level for Liebman, none of it’s enough to justify killing the animals.
“For disclosure, I’m vegan,” he said. “I don’t think it’s possible to slaughter animals in a way that’s completely painless.”