People who have lived in the countryside have wondered what the piles of pink "grapes" on the side of the rocks in the creek are when they are children, but they are actually the eggs of the snails.
More than ten years ago, Fushou snails have been flooding in major freshwater basins in China, and now they threaten human food security, what is going on?
Fushou snail replaces field snail to confuse the real with the fake
On June 28, the Hunan Hanshou County Municipal Supervision Bureau issued a notice, saying that a joint law enforcement team had been set up to seal and deal with Hanshou County Xiangyuan Special Aquatic Products Co., Ltd. and Hongtai Food Factory. The reason why these two companies were punished was that they used Fushou snails to counterfeit snail meat.
Previously, The Paper's unannounced investigation of this incident has caused an uproar on the Internet. The reporter found that due to the low cost of Fushou snail and the large amount of snail meat after peeling off the shell, it was used by many companies to replace snail meat into the food market.
Alarmingly, these post-processed snails are almost unrecognizable when they are beautifully packaged. In recent years, Fushou snails have repeatedly appeared on people's tables, whether it is a hot pot restaurant, a spicy hot pot restaurant or a street fried snail stall, it is simply pervasive.
It is said that the factories that select the snail meat are usually hidden in small mountain villages, and workers are hired to select the snail meat and weigh it before sending it to cold storage, and then wait for a familiar manufacturer to send a truck to transport it. Investigative reporters found that the environments were often unhygienic and smelled fishy.
One of them is a processing plant in Huanglushan Village, Yanwanghu Township, Hunan Province, whose customers are certain restaurants and prefabricated vegetable factories, and they can even sell hundreds of tons a year.
Can you eat snails?
Fushou snails, also known as large bottle snails, apple snails, etc., were originally produced as a creature in the Amazon rivers of South America. In the mid-to-late 20th century, it was introduced to Guangdong and other regions in mainland China because of its economic value, and later became an invasive alien species with endless harm because of its extremely terrifying reproductive ability.
Fushou snails mostly appear in the freshwater areas of the southern part of the mainland, and can lay 30,000~50,000 eggs per year, which will pollute the local water quality after a large number of reproduction, resulting in the death of other organisms in the same basin, and they may also pose a threat to the social economy.
It is understood that the snail will eat the rice seedlings and seedlings in the paddy field, resulting in a reduction in effective plants, experts said that in the rice field in the heyday of the snail breeding, there can be more than 100,000 snails per mu, resulting in a significant reduction in the yield of the paddy field.
Although the snail itself is large and non-toxic, the number of parasites they carry is amazing, and studies have shown that a snail contains up to 3000~6000 Angiostrongyloides cantonensis.
If you don't cook it correctly, you are likely to get parasitic diseases, which can cause the body's nerves to be destroyed, causing fever, headache, vomiting, coma, and even death in severe cases.
In 2006, cold snail meat sold at the "Romance of Shu Restaurant" in Beijing was found to contain a large number of roundworm larvae, causing many consumers to suffer from ascariasis in Guangzhou, with as many as 160 cases of infection. It is understood that the raw material of its cold snail meat is Fushou snail, which has also been included in the top ten typical cases of food hygiene in 06 years of the Ministry of Health.
In 2017, a woman ate a snail from a food stall during her honeymoon and was attacked by a parasite that caused a miscarriage. In August 2021, a netizen broke the news in Guang'an, Sichuan Province, that the guests clearly ordered snails in the restaurant, but in the end they got a plate of Fushou snails.
And the boss has a hard mouth, saying that he has sold "big field snails" for many years without any problems, but in the end he was slapped in the face by the Guang'an Market Supervision Bureau. This kind of thing happens every year, and every time it is exposed, the media reports it closely, but some black-hearted businesses still turn a blind eye.
Professor Zhang Yinjiang, Ph.D. supervisor at Shanghai Ocean University, has shown that in addition to the problem of parasites, because Fushou snails live in different water bodies and have different levels of pollution, they may also contain heavy metals and some new pollutants, which will also cause immeasurable damage to human health.
In fact, in addition to Fushou snails, other freshwater snails will also be stealthy "murderers". If it is not carefully handled or cooked thoroughly, it can provide a hiding place for parasites that can enter the body and cause diseases such as meningitis.
How to distinguish between a snail and a snail?
As a popular freshwater snail meat in the mainland, the field snail is the hardest hit area of the Fushou snail. In order to let the public distinguish between Fushou snail and field snail, the TV program "News Seeking Truth" has also compared the two in an all-round way.
In terms of appearance, the opening of the Fushou snail is relatively large, the shell is mainly yellow-brown, and the bottom spiral is short conical; The opening of the snail is smaller, the shell has a bit of a green feeling, and the tail end is long and the whole body is conical.
At the same time, the shell of the snail is relatively fragile and will shatter when applied to external force, but the shell of the snail is very thick and will not be broken easily. In addition, the eggs of the snail are bright pink, and the eggs of the snail are transparent, and the difference is still very large.
It is understood that there are no clear laws and regulations in the mainland prohibiting the sale of Fushou snails in the food market, but the relevant catering industry must strictly abide by the processing regulations to ensure that the relevant food is cooked at high temperature. This requires food operators to take the initiative to maintain the bottom line of their business, and also reminds consumers to keep their eyes open.
Although until now, many people in India and some African countries are still eating snails, but it is also forced by the poor economic conditions of the local people. Rather than risking your life to eat this snail, which is "wanted" by food hygiene experts around the world, it is better to choose regular food that meets the standards.
Experts from the Consumer Protection Law Research Association said that if a merchant sells Fushou snails, but uses words such as "snail meat" and "snail meat" to confuse the public, this is an infringement of consumers' right to know and the right to choose, and may need to bear legal responsibility. Therefore, it is suggested to the whole society that major enterprises and merchants accurately label food raw materials.
The reproduction ability of Fushou snail is strong, and it is extremely difficult to prevent and control, which is a problem that needs to be faced by the whole world. In the future, it is also possible to adopt efficient food processing technology to make Fushou snail a safe food resource.
However, from the current point of view, this technology has not yet come out, and we have "no way to consume Fushou snail meat". But in any case, consumers should not be made to pay for the problems that arise from food safety. The risk of eating snails is extremely high, and it is urgent to maintain food safety. Thank you for reading.