The 28-year-old French artisan started utilizing the gastropod fluid to make cleaning soap bars, which he sells in native markets, in December.
“It is all within the dexterity of the way you tickle,” Desrocher stated as he extracted the slime, noting that the method doesn’t kill the animals. “I solely contact it with my finger, you see it isn’t violent, it is easy.”
A former air drive laptop technician, Desrocher determined to start out farming snails within the northern French city of Wahagnies as a type of “returning to nature”.
“When you observe and see how snails behave, they’re really very endearing,” he stated. “It is actually an animal that I really like.”
He has raised a complete of 60,000 snails. As they enter their reproductive season, most are transferred to a bigger website, whereas round 4,000 are saved in an enclosure at his residence to reap the slime.
A single snail will yield about 2 grams of slime, which means he wants round 40 snails to supply 80 grams – sufficient to fabricate 15 100-gram cleaning soap bars.
“We’d like numerous snails,” he stated.
Though fairly unusual in Western cosmetics, snail mucus has turn out to be a extra widespread ingredient elsewhere, together with in Korean magnificence merchandise, famous for its anti-aging properties.
Desrocher stated slime contained molecules of collagen and elastin, which have anti-aging and skin-healing properties. Snails additionally naturally use their slime to restore their shells if broken, he stated.
Desrocher stated he goals to supply 3,000 snail slime cleaning soap bars in his first 12 months of manufacturing.
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