THE VARIED ROLES OF SNAILS - National Universities Commission

(c) In Liberia and other parts of the tropical
rainforest, and the Guinea Savannah, forest
mosaic in Nigeria.
The population of edible land snails is high in the wild and
because the people of Africa are beset with acute protein
shortages many people tend to eat a lot of snails to assuage
the acute shortage. The known nutritive value of the snails
makes it unthinkable not to harness it for human benefits in
view of the acute shortages. In most areas, the land snails
and some aquatic forms (e.g. the prosobranchs) are
collected indiscriminately by the rural people for their
family consumption on a daily basis. However some collect
them to sell in the local markets from where they find their
way to the urban markets. Our studies show that edible
snails are also consumed in Europe and North America.
In these places the snails are sold in shops and restaurants.
The traditional European species of what they call
“Escargots” is relatively small and slow at growing, so the
demand for snail meat which has tremendously grown over
the years has been partially satisfied by importation of the
fleshy giant African land snails, “Escargot achatine”.
The commercial success of farm ranching Escargot
achatine may be appreciated by the observation that as far
back as 1977, over 1,500 tons of canned snail meat, worth
US $3 million was shipped into Europe from Taiwan alone.
The giant African substitutes are said to be slightly inferior
in quality to the European edible snails because it is
“rubbery” and too often have “swampy-tastes”. This
quality disadvantage is usually addressed by flavouring the
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