Thieves steal 12 tonnes of snails

Polish police have arrested two suspects who stole 12 tonnes of snails gathered in the remote forests of northern Poland and destined for dinner plates in France as garlic-buttered escargot, local police said on Thursday.

"The two suspects broke into a depot belonging to a local wholesaler. Using their truck they made several trips back and forth stealing a large number of crates filled with snails," Karolina Gastol-Zawicka, a spokeswoman for police in Sztum, northern Poland said.



"It was 12 tonnes of snails. According to estimates, it was about 350,000 individual molluscs," she added.

Police caught the thieves a day after they made away with the escargots while they were trying to sell them to a different wholesaler in the region. The two men could spend up to 10 years behind bars.