U.S. Customs Seize Giant African Snails Bound For Dinner Plates
Oh no! Snails are getting a bad name in the U.S.
I'm not talking about the delicate garlic-and-butter escargots that the French favor and savor.
It's giant African land snails, also known as Archachatina marginata, banana rasp snails or a number of other names they go by.
I hadn't realized the snails could be such a pest. But customs' inspectors at Los Angeles International Airport recently seized a shipment of 67 of them from Nigeria, labeled "for human consumption."
News reports describe the snail shipment as weighing a total of 35 pounds. Each snail was larger than a human palm, measuring up to 6 or 8 inches.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says the snails are "highly invasive, voracious pests" that eat paint and stucco off houses and can munch their way through 500 plant species, if they can't find fruits and vegetables.
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