CULEY LE PATRY, NORMANDY, France — 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 of supply. 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 Fédération des Industries d’Aliments Conservés. The French eat 25,000 tonnes of snails a year – equivalent to 700 million individual snails. Two in every three snails eaten in the world is consumed in France. The attraction remains a mystery […]