CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
Snails belong to class Gastropoda, a classification that includes land, freshwater and sea snails and slugs. Snail’s ancestors are one of the earliest known types of animals in the world. There is fossil evidence of primitive gastropods dating back to the late Cambrian period this means that they lived nearly 500 million years ago.
Gastropods are able to adapt to a variety of living conditions and they don’t require large amounts of food. They have been able to continually evolve to survive the conditions around them which many researchers find to be very fascinating. Gastropods belong to the phylum mollusc (or mollusks) classification of invertebrate animal with soft unsegmented body, sometimes covered with an exoskeleton or shell. This phylum, mollusc, includes animals like squids, octopuses, clams and cattle fishes among others.
Snail and slugs are both Gastropods, therefore they are closely related, regardless the fact that slugs lack a protective you will find that there aren’t any shortages of snails around the world. Snails as gastropods are not the exception; there are land snails freshwater and sea snails in an assortment of sizes, habitats appearance.
Fried snail is produced by frying the already seasoned snail meat with vegetable oil. The hawked fried snails is carried about in a semi – closed plastic bucket from place to place thereby exposing it to dust and other effect of the environment by so doing harmful organism find their ways into the snail thereby causing food poisoning.
Food poisoning is an illness with acute gastro enteraction as a major symptom caused by the ingestion of food containing harming micro organism or harmful substances some bacterial organisms normally implicated in snails causing food poisoning when consumed include: Hsteria, Innocua, Staphylococais aureae, Micrococais agilis and Bacillus sp.
Their presence is of serious public health concern. Study of the microorganisms can make the snails off flavours rendering them unfit for consumption and reducing their fast value. (Hanna, 1966).