Foamy slime bubbles onto Damien Desrocher’s hand as he lightly rubs one of the thousands of snails that he keeps in an enclosure in his backyard.
The 28-year-old French artisan began in December last year to use the gastropod fluid to make soap bars, which he sells in local markets.
“It’s all in the dexterity of how you tickle,” Desrocher said as he extracted the slime, noting that the process does not kill the animals. “I only touch it with my finger. You see, it’s not violent. It’s simple.”
Photo: Reuters
A former air force computer technician, Desrocher decided to start farming snails in the northern French town of Wahagnies as a form of “returning to nature.”
“Once you observe and see how snails behave, they’re actually very endearing,” he said. “It’s really an animal that I love.”
He has raised 60,000 snails.
As they enter their reproductive season, most are transferred to a larger site, while about 4,000 are kept in an enclosure at his home so that he can harvest the slime.
A single snail yields about 2g of slime, so he needs about 40 snails to produce 80g — enough to manufacture 15 100g soap bars.
“We need quite a lot of snails,” he said.
Although quite uncommon in Western cosmetics, snail mucus has become a more common ingredient elsewhere, including in South Korean beauty products, noted for its anti-aging properties.
Desrocher said that slime contains collagen and elastin, which have anti-aging and skin-healing properties.
Snails use their slime to repair their shells if damaged, he said.
Desrocher said that he aims to produce 3,000 of the soap bars in his first year of production.
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