What have Giant African Snails, Achatina fulica (henceforth just snails) got to do with Bangladesh? This is a perfectly reasonable question.

The answer is that the snail is a serious agricultural pest that has been accidentally introduced to many other countries as far away as China, Mauritius, Hawaii and, you guessed it, Bangladesh. They eat huge amounts of green leaves and most of our vegetables are among their favourites. And they themselves are huge, the size of a clenched fist (see photo).

They are actually worse than just pests. They are a hazard to whole ecological systems. On several islands in Hawaii they have driven countless species of local snails to extinction or near-extinction, from which there may be long-term effects on the environment as a whole.

I recently saw Bangladesh newspaper articles about the danger to crops from huge snails. A professor correctly pinned them down to the Giant African Snail. He suggested that they should be collected and given to Dhaka Zoo where they could be used to feed the poor animals. This is a most humane suggestion since most of the budget for feeding the animals is siphoned off for the enrichment of staff at the Zoo. In fact, Dhaka Zoo is a byword for mismanagement, corruption, and the near-total disregard for animal welfare. A better pen than mine could write a novel using the zoo as an allegory for all the assorted ills of the country.

But for a poor country like Bangladesh, there is a better use for the snails. In many parts of Africa, they are considered great delicacies and sell at higher prices per kilo than beef or mutton. They taste good, are highly nutritious, and very versatile; they can be boiled, fried, stewed or grilled, whole or sliced. No more than two or three are needed per person, and even less than that in stews. In short, a cheap, healthy and flexible diet supplement.

So they should be a real boon where they become pests. What better way to combat a pest than by eating it? What other crop will not only give you good food but also improve your agricultural output? A more poetic kind of justice I can hardly imagine. But no! On an island like Mauritius with a dense population and a serious snail problem, they are not eaten. Nor in Hawaii. Perhaps in tropical China they are.

My first experience with the snails was while studying butterflies in Ghana’s Bia National Park, a very remote area with few luxuries. I was staying in a forest ranger’s camp with about a dozen families. I let it be known that I would like to try snails. And did I get them – fried in palm oil with chilies, in peanut sauce, in delicately lemon-flavoured spinach stew, with mashed melon seeds, and in several other ways. And all were really fine by the modest standards of cooking in poor areas of rural Ghana.

In return, I cooked a chicken curry for the whole camp (chicken is beyond the budget in an African village – people are so unused to it that I once stayed in a village where they actually had to shoot the chickens I had bought for dinner, since they had no experience in catching them). I had been teased about how o-bruni (whites) like myself could not take ‘spicy’ African food so I took the opportunity of lacing it liberally with chilies, much hotter than anything they ever cooked. I brought tears to some people’s eyes. But a fine meal was had by all – the largest dinner I have ever cooked to this very day.

Humans and food really do make curious partners. Many tribal groups in Ghana do not eat snails. And outside tropical Africa, mainly traditional tribals do, but not always. In France, smaller snails are eaten, smothered with so much garlic that you can hardly taste them. I believe that you have an obligation to try anything eaten by others at least once – but you have no obligation to like it. This has led me to sample an amazing list of things not normally considered food – but I am popularizing snails, so I had better not go into detail!