Mon Dieu! Burgundy Snails Aren't French Anymore

In a large, sparsely furnished room at a food processing plant in the town of Migennes, in France's Burgundy region, three employees prepare large snails for packaging. They take the snails' flesh, which is cooked separately, and put them into shells of the right size. They reconstitute about a thousand snails an hour, says Romain Chapron, the director of Croque Bourgogne, the company that owns this plant and sells a couple million snails each year. These cooked snails are shipped to grocery stores and restaurants, mostly in northeastern France, says Chapron.

These buttery, are a classic French delicacy; yet they aren't French any more. Every snail prepared by the employees at Croque Bourgogne comes from Hungary. In fact, all companies that sell this shelled delicacy in France import it from elsewhere in Europe. "One hundred percent of Burgundy snails you buy in France are picked in Central Europe," Chapron says.