The Reason You Should Never Eat A Raw Snail

In November 2018, an Australian man named Sam Ballard died after suffering complications from a parasitic worm infection that lasted more than half a decade. The infection initially put him in a 420-day coma. He was completely paralyzed when he woke up and needed 24/7 care for the remainder of his life. Eight years prior, a then-19-year-old Ballard ingested a slug as part of a drunken dare from his friends. Moments after swallowing the mollusk, he felt severe pain in his legs, and his body started to become weak. At the hospital, doctors discovered that Ballard had developed rat lungworm disease, which he got from the infected slug.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Infection (CDC), rat lungworm or the Angiostrongylus parasite is typically transmitted between rats and mollusks, like slugs and their shelled counterparts, snails. Slugs get infected by the parasite when they ingest fecal matter from rats. On the other hand, humans may accidentally become infected when they eat raw or undercooked snails, with the CDC reporting incidents of this human infection in Southeast Asia, Australia, and some parts of Africa. In the U.S., cases have been documented in Hawaii, Louisiana, Alabama, Tennessee, and even Texas.

Eating raw meat comes with risks, especially raw chicken, which has been largely associated with salmonella contamination in the U.S. Like raw poultry, undercooked snails have also earned a bad rap in the food industry for causing food-borne illnesses. Scientific research has found that snails, regardless of whether they live in water or on land, are very susceptible to parasites. As such, humans who eat snails that aren't thoroughly cooked are at risk of contracting a variety of snail-borne parasitic diseases. Some of these diseases are even deadly, with freshwater snails causing over 200,000 deaths a year through parasitic infections like schistosomiasis.

All is not fraught for people who eat snails, including those who are trying escargot for the first time, however; cooking the mollusks can effectively kill parasites. Unfortunately, it's not just snails you should be wary of when talking about infections like rat lungworm disease. The CDC has warned of possible transmission from eating freshwater shrimp, land crabs, frogs, and even vegetables. The Cleveland Clinic suggests avoiding eating raw vegetables in places where the parasite has been documented.