Barbadians will not eat the African snail. We have been socialized to see the Achatina fulica as slimy and nasty and to be sprinkled with salt when spotted on our property. Even in the harsh economic times the local Guyanese population has been the only one interested in ‘picking’ the snails to benefit from the bounty set at .50 cents a pound.
It means if we are to control the growing number of African snails – sighted in the 11 parishes – we will have to use massive amounts of a killing agent which is not harmful to the environment. Keeley Holder is an Israeli trained Integrated Pest Management Specialist based in St. Joseph who suggests the African snail population can be eradicated based on the findings of Albert R. Mead (1961): The Giant African Snail: A Problem in Economic Malacology p.68:
“On the other hand, they found that the following substances would kill the slugs within a few minutes after being dusted on them: ammonium sulphate, ammonium sulphocyanide, barium sulphocyanide, calcium carbide, calcium cyanide, corrosive sublimate, drained creosote salts, potassium sulphocyanide, sodium carbonate and sodium sulphocyanide. Of these, only calcium cyanide was sufficiently lethal at practicable concentrations to be considered for use in field conditions; its very deadly nature, however, makes serious consideration completely out of the question.”
There is no loud public communication by the authorities about how we plan to attack the growing African snail population. Besides the fact the snails are harmful to fauna and flora they are unsightly on an island which is marketed as a tourist destination, it seems a commonsense position to get the African snail population under control.
Leave a Reply to islandgal246Cancel reply