Goo looks so cute: Thai farmers milk snail to make money from beauty | World News

For years, they were undesirable slimy plagues for Thai farmers . But a global cosmetic demand for snail secretions, supposedly to compensate for aging and smooth skin, has led to a growing new business for snail farms, in which Mollusks are protected with slime, called mucus.

In the past three years, Thai farmers and local people have begun to keep the creatures they once tried to chase themselves, because slime of slugs has become more valuable than gold and the industry. Global greases have exploded with an estimated value of up to 314 million dollars.

There are currently 85 snail farms in Nakhon Nayok province of Thailand, two hours east of Bangkok, together producing 600 liters of mucus each month. The species bred for slime is the Achatina snail, better known as the African giant snail.

Phatinisiri Thangkeaw, a teacher, said she had started her business by buying snails from nearby rice farmers, who were happy to get rid of their new crop of miscreants. She paid local farmers about $ 1 for a kilo of snail and now has more than 1,000 snails that she takes milk to get their mucus and then sells.



Farmers used to throw them on the road or on rivers. However, now they sell them to me to earn more money.

The process of harvesting slime is considered humane, involving dripping water on the snail to encourage them to secrete mucus, not killing or harming them. To keep high quality, in Thailand, snails are fed with vegetables and cereals and are only milked every three weeks.

In Thailand, raw mucin is sold to a single cosmetic company, Aden International, established after Kitpong Puttarathuvanun saw a gap in the market. He sells slime in the form of expensive serum and dry powder.

It was in the 1980s that the potential of snail secretions was noticed by breeders in Chile, who were surprised at how soft their hands were after handling the animals. soft. The first cream containing snail mucus was produced in Chile, but in recent years, it has exploded as a component in Korean and American beauty products, and snail-slime masks have. can cost up to 300 dollars.

Their mucin contains ingredients such as glycoprotein, hyaluronic acid and glycolic acid, and snail cream and serum sold with the promise of stimulating collagen, slowing the appearance of wrinkles and healing acne and reducing tissue. Scar, although the dermatologist divided for benefits.