No "Shroom" for Bureaucrats
Manic Panic: Fungus Among Us
"I confess, that nothing frightens me more than the appearance of mushrooms
on the table." --Alexandre Dumas
This year’s Morel season is wrapping up without incident and health officials insist there’s nothing to worry about, but a spokesman for the Los Angeles Mycological Socie
ty says a virulent breed of mycophobia, pathological irrational fear of mushrooms, lurks just beneath the surface in local food and health policy and could erupt anew at any time.
ty says a virulent breed of mycophobia, pathological irrational fear of mushrooms, lurks just beneath the surface in local food and health policy and could erupt anew at any time.
Worse, this particular phobia strain is a nasty hybrid, crossed with an intransigent bureaucratic distrust of a highly successful, market based, quality control system.
The issue heated up in Los Angeles County in March. For fear commercial customers might be getting deadly toadstools instead of mushrooms -although there were absolutely no reports that anyone had- the county’s Department of Health suddenly decided to ban the sale of wild mushrooms at any of the county’s 72 farmers’ markets.
The issue heated up in Los Angeles County in March. For fear commercial customers might be getting deadly toadstools instead of mushrooms -although there were absolutely no reports that anyone had- the county’s Department of Health suddenly decided to ban the sale of wild mushrooms at any of the county’s 72 farmers’ markets.
Well, it wasn’t exactly a ban. Rather, the county started enforcing a requirement in the California Uniform Retail Food Law that any wild mushrooms sold at the markets come only from officially approved, sanctioned, certified sources.
In the world of wild mushrooms, such sources number exactly zero.
“I thought ‘here it comes again,’” groans Dick Smith with the Los Angeles Mycological Society. “It’s like bureaucrats deciding ‘hey you don’t have a license to go pick blackberries, so let’s regulate it.’”
“They must have thought the concept of ‘wild’ mushrooms was some kind of marketing gimmick, that the word ‘wild’ was just a fancy label,” says the Society’s field trip chairman Stephen Pencall. “They’re just astounded to find out ‘What? Somebody went out into the forest? And picked them? Off of the ground?’”
That is, of course, precisely where wild mushrooms really do come from, courtesy of a cast of often veteran, sometimes colorful, self taught pros like fulltime freelance fungus forager “Hippie Mark.” The Los Angeles Times recently chronicled Hippie Mark’s annual 11 month shroom sojourn through the forests of the Pacific Coast where he can collect up to 50 pounds of wild mushrooms a day; which are then eagerly snapped up by mushroom buyers and taken to farmers markets or restaurants. It is the task of people like him not just to collect the mushrooms, but also to make sure he’s not collecting any poisonous cases of mistaken identity like the abundant, and highly toxic, amanita phalloides, “death caps,” which bear a superficial resemblance to the tasty volvariella. Mr. Hippie may have a permit to collect the likes of craterellus cornucopioides, black trumpet chanterelles, in state and national forests, but his profile contains no mention of any official certification or endorsement of his mushroom recognition or collection skills.
In the world of wild mushrooms, such sources number exactly zero.
“I thought ‘here it comes again,’” groans Dick Smith with the Los Angeles Mycological Society. “It’s like bureaucrats deciding ‘hey you don’t have a license to go pick blackberries, so let’s regulate it.’”
“They must have thought the concept of ‘wild’ mushrooms was some kind of marketing gimmick, that the word ‘wild’ was just a fancy label,” says the Society’s field trip chairman Stephen Pencall. “They’re just astounded to find out ‘What? Somebody went out into the forest? And picked them? Off of the ground?’”
That is, of course, precisely where wild mushrooms really do come from, courtesy of a cast of often veteran, sometimes colorful, self taught pros like fulltime freelance fungus forager “Hippie Mark.” The Los Angeles Times recently chronicled Hippie Mark’s annual 11 month shroom sojourn through the forests of the Pacific Coast where he can collect up to 50 pounds of wild mushrooms a day; which are then eagerly snapped up by mushroom buyers and taken to farmers markets or restaurants. It is the task of people like him not just to collect the mushrooms, but also to make sure he’s not collecting any poisonous cases of mistaken identity like the abundant, and highly toxic, amanita phalloides, “death caps,” which bear a superficial resemblance to the tasty volvariella. Mr. Hippie may have a permit to collect the likes of craterellus cornucopioides, black trumpet chanterelles, in state and national forests, but his profile contains no mention of any official certification or endorsement of his mushroom recognition or collection skills.
Those are established strictly, and quite effectively, by the market.
That free market approach is a problem for Los Angeles County’s Health Department. “There has to be some oversight, from the boat to the plate, or from the farm to the plate,” says the county’s Environmental Ombudsman Terrance Powell. “With respect to wild mushrooms, they’re grown on land where we know not what the conditions are, by individuals who we know not what their qualifications are, to identify whether they’re safe.”
Thus did the health department come to the rescue in the latest spasm of government intervention in the wild mushroom trade.
The effective ban on wild mushrooms in L.A. markets touched off an uproar from markets, gatherers, restaurants, and even some celebrities concerned their chefs wouldn’t be able to flourish their gourmet meals with morels. The brouhaha lasted only as long as it took mushroom retailers to change acquisition channels and start buying wild mushrooms from licensed wholesale distributors.
Those distributors, in turn, get their mushrooms from…
From…
That free market approach is a problem for Los Angeles County’s Health Department. “There has to be some oversight, from the boat to the plate, or from the farm to the plate,” says the county’s Environmental Ombudsman Terrance Powell. “With respect to wild mushrooms, they’re grown on land where we know not what the conditions are, by individuals who we know not what their qualifications are, to identify whether they’re safe.”
Thus did the health department come to the rescue in the latest spasm of government intervention in the wild mushroom trade.
The effective ban on wild mushrooms in L.A. markets touched off an uproar from markets, gatherers, restaurants, and even some celebrities concerned their chefs wouldn’t be able to flourish their gourmet meals with morels. The brouhaha lasted only as long as it took mushroom retailers to change acquisition channels and start buying wild mushrooms from licensed wholesale distributors.
Those distributors, in turn, get their mushrooms from…
From…
From...
Exactly where they came from before, the informal colonies of itinerant foragers.
The difference now is that sellers end up paying about 20% more for mushrooms and the merchandise is typically about four days less fresh when it comes to market, according to retailers.
But gol darn it, there’s somebody with some paperwork in the mix now.
Fungus fans like Dick Smith say the county realized it was in over its head and backed down. “There was such an outcry from people who really did know what they were doing, and were legitimate, that it just went away.”
Powell says his office has simply achieved the most it could, for now. “We’ve taken a first step to identify where products are coming from, so if someone gets sick, we can trace back to keep other people from getting sick.”
Mycology practitioners say the escapade was an exercise in an overreaching public health bureaucracy reflexively tampering with a business it doesn’t understand. “People in the industry are acutely aware of the threat that the government might step in if there’s a major poisoning incident,” Stephen Pencall proclaims. “And they’ve been self regulating successfully since the wild mushroom boom started more than 20 years ago.”
“What ‘self regulating’ means to me is that there are standards present,” counters Powell. “And I don’t see any standards.”
But what Powell really doesn’t see... is any government standards.
History is full of examples where government became involved in regulating an industry after that industry had failed to protect public welfare and a crisis ensued. In the case of the wild mushroom trade, mushroom aficionados see government moving in where there has been no crisis, where in fact, the preexisting free market regulating mechanism has achieved a safety record of close to 100%.
“There are no experts on the other side of the fence other than self proclaimed experts,” Powell says. “To the naysayers, I’m saying look at the statistics nationally and locally on people getting sick from mushrooms. So it’s not without consequences.”
Mushroom devotees respond yes, by all means do look at the statistics.
Exactly where they came from before, the informal colonies of itinerant foragers.
The difference now is that sellers end up paying about 20% more for mushrooms and the merchandise is typically about four days less fresh when it comes to market, according to retailers.
But gol darn it, there’s somebody with some paperwork in the mix now.
Fungus fans like Dick Smith say the county realized it was in over its head and backed down. “There was such an outcry from people who really did know what they were doing, and were legitimate, that it just went away.”
Powell says his office has simply achieved the most it could, for now. “We’ve taken a first step to identify where products are coming from, so if someone gets sick, we can trace back to keep other people from getting sick.”
Mycology practitioners say the escapade was an exercise in an overreaching public health bureaucracy reflexively tampering with a business it doesn’t understand. “People in the industry are acutely aware of the threat that the government might step in if there’s a major poisoning incident,” Stephen Pencall proclaims. “And they’ve been self regulating successfully since the wild mushroom boom started more than 20 years ago.”
“What ‘self regulating’ means to me is that there are standards present,” counters Powell. “And I don’t see any standards.”
But what Powell really doesn’t see... is any government standards.
History is full of examples where government became involved in regulating an industry after that industry had failed to protect public welfare and a crisis ensued. In the case of the wild mushroom trade, mushroom aficionados see government moving in where there has been no crisis, where in fact, the preexisting free market regulating mechanism has achieved a safety record of close to 100%.
“There are no experts on the other side of the fence other than self proclaimed experts,” Powell says. “To the naysayers, I’m saying look at the statistics nationally and locally on people getting sick from mushrooms. So it’s not without consequences.”
Mushroom devotees respond yes, by all means do look at the statistics.
Please!
The California Poison Control System reports statewide there are almost a thousand mushroom poisonings a year. The vast majority of the reported incidents are those involving very young children who pick up and eat mushrooms while playing outside. Others are cases of amateur would-be gourmets who, on their own, mistakenly pick non-edible varieties for cooking and make themselves or their families sick. Some of them are immigrants who pick for themselves using mushroom recognition standards that applied in their homelands but don’t apply here. In a few instances, some more counter culturally inclined foragers gather what they hope to be psychedelic shrooms, and end up on a bad trip.
Conspicuously absent from the list are any scenarios in which someone actually bought mushrooms from a dealer, restaurant or farmers' market, and got sick from them.
Stuart Heard, the Executive Director of the California Poison Control System, acknowledges his numbers are incomplete. Not all reports make it all the way up to the state level. But out of a thousand odd mushroom poisonings a year, neither he nor any of his researchers is aware of so much as a single instance of anyone being poisoned by mushrooms that came from a grocery store, restaurant, or farmers market. “For all we know,” he says, “there have been no cases of anyone being poisoned by commercially purchased mushrooms.”
And nationally?
Again there are no comprehensive figures, but neither the Food and Drug Administration nor the Centers for Disease Control and prevention has come up with any statistically significant number of cases of commercially bought mushrooms making people sick. Neither will say it never happens, but the reality appears pretty close to never.
“That’s one of the things that really annoy me,” Pencall fumes. “The regulators are focused exclusively on a scenario that is extremely unlikely, and ignoring the real problem, which is ill-informed individuals picking mushrooms for their own use and poisoning themselves and members of their own families.”
He blames what he says is a longtime culture of pathological mushroom aversion, mycophobia, within the regulatory community. “They have an attitude that regards wild mushroom consumption as dangerous, inherently dangerous, not just dangerous if undertaken cavalierly, but dangerous under all circumstances. A lot of health regulators have in mind that all mushrooms are inherently difficult to identify, therefore dangerous.” The FDA’s “Bad Bug Book” handbook certainly takes a dark view, intoning
The California Poison Control System reports statewide there are almost a thousand mushroom poisonings a year. The vast majority of the reported incidents are those involving very young children who pick up and eat mushrooms while playing outside. Others are cases of amateur would-be gourmets who, on their own, mistakenly pick non-edible varieties for cooking and make themselves or their families sick. Some of them are immigrants who pick for themselves using mushroom recognition standards that applied in their homelands but don’t apply here. In a few instances, some more counter culturally inclined foragers gather what they hope to be psychedelic shrooms, and end up on a bad trip.
Conspicuously absent from the list are any scenarios in which someone actually bought mushrooms from a dealer, restaurant or farmers' market, and got sick from them.
Stuart Heard, the Executive Director of the California Poison Control System, acknowledges his numbers are incomplete. Not all reports make it all the way up to the state level. But out of a thousand odd mushroom poisonings a year, neither he nor any of his researchers is aware of so much as a single instance of anyone being poisoned by mushrooms that came from a grocery store, restaurant, or farmers market. “For all we know,” he says, “there have been no cases of anyone being poisoned by commercially purchased mushrooms.”
And nationally?
Again there are no comprehensive figures, but neither the Food and Drug Administration nor the Centers for Disease Control and prevention has come up with any statistically significant number of cases of commercially bought mushrooms making people sick. Neither will say it never happens, but the reality appears pretty close to never.
“That’s one of the things that really annoy me,” Pencall fumes. “The regulators are focused exclusively on a scenario that is extremely unlikely, and ignoring the real problem, which is ill-informed individuals picking mushrooms for their own use and poisoning themselves and members of their own families.”
He blames what he says is a longtime culture of pathological mushroom aversion, mycophobia, within the regulatory community. “They have an attitude that regards wild mushroom consumption as dangerous, inherently dangerous, not just dangerous if undertaken cavalierly, but dangerous under all circumstances. A lot of health regulators have in mind that all mushrooms are inherently difficult to identify, therefore dangerous.” The FDA’s “Bad Bug Book” handbook certainly takes a dark view, intoning
“for individuals who are not experts in mushroom identification there are generally no easily recognizable differences between poisonous and nonpoisonous species.”
It is the FDA’s most recent (2001) U.S. Public Health Service Food Code that has inspired local governments like L.A. County’s to try to bureaucratize wild mushroom sales. The code recommends “mushroom species picked in the wild shall be obtained from sources where each mushroom is individually inspected and found to be safe by an approved mushroom identification expert.”
The regulators’ latest rush to regulate may betray a basic misunderstanding of, not so much mushrooms, but of the market forces at work in a highly selective boutique industry. Unlike the battalions of very official inspectors on government or corporate salaries who pore over America’s vast output of meats, poultry, fish, or produce, every link in the chain of the tiny wild mushroom industry has a very personal stake in ensuring that what gets through is safe and good enough to eat.
Or else.
“In almost every case those mushrooms pass through several hands” Pencall points out. “They go from a picker to a wholesaler then a market or a restaurant. Several people actually see and put their hands on these mushrooms and examine them for quality as well as for identifications. That has a filter or iterative filter effect that weeds out not only the misidentified mushrooms, but the mushrooms that are worm infested as to be unfit for consumption. It’s a really expensive product and people don’t want to buy low quality wild mushrooms.”
Unlike food handlers or inspectors in other fields, nobody in the supply chain of the wild mushroom industry has the option of abdicating responsibility to someone else. The forager knows that if he turns in a load that’s contaminated with just a few death caps, his whole day’s work could be thrown out and his future credibility with buyers jeopardized. Same with the buyer, and the vendor.
The regulators’ latest rush to regulate may betray a basic misunderstanding of, not so much mushrooms, but of the market forces at work in a highly selective boutique industry. Unlike the battalions of very official inspectors on government or corporate salaries who pore over America’s vast output of meats, poultry, fish, or produce, every link in the chain of the tiny wild mushroom industry has a very personal stake in ensuring that what gets through is safe and good enough to eat.
Or else.
“In almost every case those mushrooms pass through several hands” Pencall points out. “They go from a picker to a wholesaler then a market or a restaurant. Several people actually see and put their hands on these mushrooms and examine them for quality as well as for identifications. That has a filter or iterative filter effect that weeds out not only the misidentified mushrooms, but the mushrooms that are worm infested as to be unfit for consumption. It’s a really expensive product and people don’t want to buy low quality wild mushrooms.”
Unlike food handlers or inspectors in other fields, nobody in the supply chain of the wild mushroom industry has the option of abdicating responsibility to someone else. The forager knows that if he turns in a load that’s contaminated with just a few death caps, his whole day’s work could be thrown out and his future credibility with buyers jeopardized. Same with the buyer, and the vendor.
And just imagine what would happen to the career of a gourmet chef who poisoned his customers with inedible mushrooms.
Says Pencall: “Some people say ‘it’s only a matter of time before there’s some horrible incident when 5 to 10 people get poisoned and it’s bound to happen sooner or later’ well it hasn’t happened. The system is working a lot better than anybody thinks.”
Powell says he’s learned to expect criticism. “It’s a very lonely place when you’re proactive. It’s very easy to act on a reactive basis. When you do something in the absence of, or prior to, a trauma or a tragedy, It’s very easy to complain about big brother
Wild mushrooms don’t have to be monitored any more than a carrot, but not any less.”
Therein lies the true problem. Wild mushrooms are already monitored, very closely. It’s just not the government that does the monitoring. Carrots don’t come to market in such miniscule quantities or sell for such colossal prices. Farmer McGregor’s entire carrot patch may be USDA approved and inspected, but there is not someone poring over every single carrot at every stop from the farm to the stew pot. At sometimes less than a dollar a pound and never more than two dollars, carrots simply are not worth the trouble. The economics are very different for products like morels, which can retail for upwards of 30 dollars a pound. Nobody would ever keep that close an eye on a carrot.
Powell dismisses any notion of fungus prejudice. “Mycophobia? No. I love mushrooms.
Says Pencall: “Some people say ‘it’s only a matter of time before there’s some horrible incident when 5 to 10 people get poisoned and it’s bound to happen sooner or later’ well it hasn’t happened. The system is working a lot better than anybody thinks.”
Powell says he’s learned to expect criticism. “It’s a very lonely place when you’re proactive. It’s very easy to act on a reactive basis. When you do something in the absence of, or prior to, a trauma or a tragedy, It’s very easy to complain about big brother
Wild mushrooms don’t have to be monitored any more than a carrot, but not any less.”
Therein lies the true problem. Wild mushrooms are already monitored, very closely. It’s just not the government that does the monitoring. Carrots don’t come to market in such miniscule quantities or sell for such colossal prices. Farmer McGregor’s entire carrot patch may be USDA approved and inspected, but there is not someone poring over every single carrot at every stop from the farm to the stew pot. At sometimes less than a dollar a pound and never more than two dollars, carrots simply are not worth the trouble. The economics are very different for products like morels, which can retail for upwards of 30 dollars a pound. Nobody would ever keep that close an eye on a carrot.
Powell dismisses any notion of fungus prejudice. “Mycophobia? No. I love mushrooms.
The cultivated ones.”
Well Q.E.D.
For wild mushrooms, he holds out the threat of still more governmental tampering to fix a system that's not broken to begin with. "What I'm hopeful of is that this will stimulate a review by the state and that they will come up with a system that will provide the oversight that will be reasonable and effective."
Bitter experience has demonstrated that the government's involvement in this particular field has been neither reasonable nor effective.
More than a decade ago in northern California, Alameda County was the center of an effort by several agencies to set up a wild mushroom regulation mechanism, despite the fact that the area's ad hoc private system was working just fine. Unsurprisingly, the effort proved expensive, cumbersome, and unworkable. It collapsed, providing a stark lesson.
"That fiasco may have immunized the San Francisco area from such stupid ideas," says Pencall. "But eventually, knowledgeable regulators retire, and those who don't remember move in. Other areas are ripe because there haven't been proposals there before and regulators have suddenly awakened to the fact that there are wild mushrooms sales going on. 'Oh my god, they're all around. Someone could get poisoned and then the world will end.'"
Bitter experience has demonstrated that the government's involvement in this particular field has been neither reasonable nor effective.
More than a decade ago in northern California, Alameda County was the center of an effort by several agencies to set up a wild mushroom regulation mechanism, despite the fact that the area's ad hoc private system was working just fine. Unsurprisingly, the effort proved expensive, cumbersome, and unworkable. It collapsed, providing a stark lesson.
"That fiasco may have immunized the San Francisco area from such stupid ideas," says Pencall. "But eventually, knowledgeable regulators retire, and those who don't remember move in. Other areas are ripe because there haven't been proposals there before and regulators have suddenly awakened to the fact that there are wild mushrooms sales going on. 'Oh my god, they're all around. Someone could get poisoned and then the world will end.'"
March 14, 2006
posted by damnyanqui @ 7:19 AM
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