(FreedomBeacon.com)- In a move that should surprise no one, U.S. Customs and Border Protection recently stopped six animals from entering the country at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
They were easy to catch. They were moving pretty slowly.
According to a press release published by the agency, a traveler from Ghana he had six Giant African Snails in his luggage.
While eaten and kept as pets in other countries, snails are considered a “prohibited organism” in the United States.
Robert Larkin, the United States’ director of port operations, said that CBP officers and agricultural experts work carefully to identify, detect, and intercept possible threats. He said the health and well-being of the inhabitants in the United States are greatly improved by detecting this extremely invasive pest.
The USDA estimates that eradicating the species from Southern Florida in the 1960s cost one million dollars and ten years of work. For a long time, the United States of America was the snails’ primary place of residence.
According to the USDA, female snails may produce up to 1,200 eggs each year, suggesting that they can reproduce rapidly. The Department even went so far as to call them “one of the most destructive snails in the world.”
The government agency said the snails found were intended for human consumption, but eating them poses a severe risk to people’s health and the environment.
According to the group’s findings, Giant African Snails are known to have a parasitic nematode that may lead to meningitis in humans and due to an appetite that contains at least 500 different types of plants.
As soon as the snails were brought to the notice of Customs and Border Protection agents, they seized control of them in order to conduct further investigation.
The agency did not say what happened to the person carrying the snails.
