KEY POINTS:
A slow-motion crisis threatens the French way of life - the great snail shortage of 2008. Shell-shocked French food processors have warned that they can no longer obtain sufficient quantities of snails from eastern Europe, their principal source.
Snail collecting for the French market used to be a popular way of making money in eastern European countries, especially in Poland and Hungary. But since they joined the European Union five years ago, better-paid job opportunities have flourished.
In a glum statement, the French food processing industry announced that snail-collecting was now the object of "growing disaffection" among eastern Europeans.
People were no longer keen to leave home before dawn on wet days, armed with a torch, to search the Polish forests or Hungarian scrubland for the "burgundy snail" or Helix pomatia.
As a result, the price of processed snails in France will rise sharply later this year, warned the Federation des Industries d'Aliments Conserves.
The attraction of snails remains a mystery to much of the rest of the planet.
The sauce served with the snails - made from garlic, parsley and butter - is delicious, but to the uninitiated, the escargot itself tastes like a tired piece of chewing-gum.
A quarter of the French market is still supplied by French snail-hunters, who mostly search for snails for their own tables. The small French snail-farming industry has suffered badly in recent hot, dry summers.
Of the ready-cooked or processed snails - widely used in the less expensive or less scrupulous restaurants - 99 per cent come from abroad.
A higher bounty will now have to be paid, French food processors concede. Hunters used to get as little as 2c per snail. Transport and processing costs are also booming.
At present, consumers in France pay about 3.50 euro for 12 boiled snails, or 6 euro if they are supplied ready-cooked in the traditional garlic-based bourguignon sauce.
The grey and brown, spiralled, edible, burgundy snail, is said to have become rare in France. Although it is a protected species, hunting, for private consumption or sale, is still permitted.
BOOMING DEMAND
* The French eat 25,000 tonnes of snails a year.
* The amount is equivalent to 700 million individual snails.
* Two in every three snails eaten in the world are consumed in France.
* Two-thirds of all the snails eaten in France come from eastern Europe and the Balkans.
- INDEPENDENT
