(28 Mar 2025)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Tunis, Tunisia – 27 March 2025
1. Various of restaurant owner Wahiba Dridi washing land snails in kitchen sink
2. Snails in pot in Dridi’s restaurant kitchen
3. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Wahiba Dridi, restaurant owner:
"They are boiled first, then removed from the water. The water is used to cook pasta or vermicelli. Everyone cooks what they want with it. It’s very delicious and has many benefits.”
4. Dridi plating an order of snails for a customer
5. Various of customer eating snails at Dridi’s restaurant
6. Plate of snails
7. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Wahiba Dridi, restaurant owner:
"Lamb meat is not good for you but we people don’t eat what’s healthy. If people knew the value of snails they would eat them all yearlong."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Akouda, Tunisia – 27 March 2025
8. Various of an outdoor market in Akouda in Sousse, Tunisia
9. Stall selling meat products
10. Various of snails for sale at the market
11. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Mohamed (no second name given), Akouda resident:
"Snails are better for cooking than lamb. If lamb meat costs 60 dinars ($19.30), a bowl of snails is five dinars ($1.60). And it’s medicinal. They feed on rosemary and thyme!”
12. Various of men collect snails from a field in Akouda
13. Various of close up of snails
14. SOUNDBITE (Arabic) Kamal (no second name given), 29-year-olds snail seller:
"Many young people from our area work in this field (collecting snails) now. Many people from our area work in this field. It’s profitable, beneficial and quite in demand."
15. Various of man collecting snails in a field
STORYLINE:
As customers prepare to break their Ramadan fast at Wahiba Dridi’s restaurant in Tunisia, she stirs a pot of peppery snails, extolling their virtues as a lifeline for cash-strapped families.
Once a niche delicacy, snails have become a protein staple for many Tunisians priced out of the meat market.
"They are boiled first, then removed from the water. The water is used to cook pasta or vermicelli. Everyone cooks what they want with it," said Dridi, 52.
A kilogram of snails costs 27.5 Tunisian dinars ($9), half the price of beef, which has soared to 55 dinars ($18) amid the country’s worst economic crisis in decades.
The average monthly income of 950 dinars ($305) leaves little room for meat, once a Ramadan staple.
"If people knew the value of snails, they would eat them all year long," said Dridi.
In an open air market in Akouda, Tunisia, snails are sold alongside meat and vegetables.
Red meat is usually the protein of choice in Tunisia for iftar, the meal with which Muslims break their day-long fast during Ramadan.
One man named Mohamed who came to the market to buy snails said he preferred cooking with snails to lamb.
"Snails are better for cooking than lamb. If lamb meat costs 60 dinars ($19.3), a bowl of snails is five dinars ($1.6)," he said.
In the muddy fields outside Akouda, 29-year-old Karim spends hours collecting snails, a job that sustains him and other unemployed youth.
He and his friends painstakingly fill large bags with hundreds of snails, picking them off of rocks and leaves, one by one.
Each harvest earns him a few dinars, a lifeline in a country where unemployment is one of the highest in the region.
"It’s profitable, beneficial and quite in demand," he said.
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