Snails are part of the Italian culinary tradition and their farming (i.e. heliciculture) is recently spreading in different areas of the country, due to increasing demand. While the purpose of farming is the production of snail meat for human consumption, a by-product of the farming process is gaining more and more attention: the slime. Due to its claimed soothing and regenerative properties, snail slime is in fact used in the cosmetic and pharmaceutical sectors as a precious ingredient in skin-care products. Aim of the study was to understand the environmental benefits of this symbiotic activity involving the food and the cosmetic sectors: the slime collected from the reared snails could in fact partly substitute the chemical ingredients of traditional skin-care products or the slime harvested from snails grown in laboratory; while snail meat could be a valid substitute to conventional livestock meat. An extensive farm of Helix Aspersa snails located in the north of Italy was adopted as case study. Snails are born and grow in open-air pens, where their food supply (i.e. seasonal vegetables) is directly cultivated; in this way, the mortality due to the displacement of the juveniles is reduced. Besides, no additive flours are used. However, in terms of industrial symbiosis, a third-party actor comes into play in the system investigated: snails are partly fed with the waste generated by a market-gardener (i.e. discarded and unsold fruits and vegetables). Heliciculture might therefore be a solution to reduce the pending issue of food waste and, at the same time, generate two valuable products for the food and cosmetic industries. On the other hand, land occupation, use of fertilizers and all the other inputs to the heliciculture system may counterbalance the beneficial effects of waste and by-products valorisation. To evaluate the environmental sustainability of the system, the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) tool was employed. Process included in the system boundaries, with a cradle-to-grave approach, were field preparation (construction of the pens and introduction of the first breeder), farming activities, slime harvesting, cleaning and packaging of snails’ meat for human consumptions, cooking and waste processing. Both 1 kg of meat and 1 kg of protein were considered as functional units. Under the assumption of a 10-years life span of the farm and that the yield was constant throughout the time horizon considered, LCA results highlighted how the majority of CO2 emissions were due to the installation of the pens. On the other hand, feed had a significant role in the eutrophication and ecosystem toxicity categories, due to the high amount of water used to irrigate the soil and the use of fertilizers. Snail meat resulted to have much lower impacts compared to traditional meat, while nutritional values resulted comparable: laboratory analyses on sold snails indicated a protein and lipid contents of approximately 12% and 1% respectively. At the same time, the use of snail slime in substitution of chemical additives to skin-care products undoubtedly reduced the environmental impact of the cosmetic sector. However, further analyses on snails direct and indirect emissions, soil occupation and long-term primary data should be performed to increase the validity of the study. Nevertheless, preliminary results showed that heliciculture could be a solution to improve simultaneously the sustainability of the agri-food and the cosmetic sectors.
KEYWORDS: heliciculture; industrial symbiosis; life cycle assessment; snail meat; snail slime
5g. Special Track - Industrial symbiosis, networking and cooperation as part of industrial
