Slow food under threat
THE FRENCH consume 40,000t of snails each year, and restaurants alone serve about 1bn of them annually. But of these only a proportion comes from France itself.
Catherine Souvestre, who has a snail farm south of Laval, is typical of growers. She produces two sorts, the Petit Gris and the Gros Gris.
The Petit Gris consists of both the garden snail, helix aspersa, and Burgundy snail helix pomatia. The Gros Gris (helix aspersa maxima), by contrast, are not indigenous, but are reared from captive stock in snail farms in France. They originate from a larger snail common in Algeria.
Commercial snail farming can be intensive, with the snails living out their lives indoors, or free-range.
Free-range snails live in what looks like a chicken pen enclosed in wire mesh or a polytunnel. They are fed on greens topped up with a little grain concentrate and some chalk for proper formation of their shells. They typically take about a year to raise.
Mme Souvestre has about 140,000 snails at any one time. She sells her stock in the local markets, and from the farm itself.
Asked about the economics of snail farming, she replies that her husband is a carpenter, but that the snail enterprise provides a valued second income.
What of the state of snail farming in Britain?
Demand is much lower here than in France and David Bailie-Bellew of South-West Snails, based at North Nethercleave Farm, Umberleigh, Devon, is one of only two or three snail farmers in the country. Despite that he runs courses for would-be snail farmers, and these are regularly taken up.
He and his wife Maura keep 250,000 helix aspersa maxima (the Gros Gris) in polytunnels and supply local hotels, restaurants and delicatessens with snails in various gastronomic forms
Another snail farmer who has now given up commercial production said that western European snail farmers were coming under increasing competition from Eastern European countries such as Poland. The reason is the usual one – costs were much lower.
But, as Mme Souvestre put it with typical gallic humour, snails are like humans. “Snails and humans are born, then breed, then die. C”est tout.”