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Deadly morel mushroom outbreak highlights big gaps in fungi knowledge (arstechnica.com)

submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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On Thursday, Montana health officials published an outbreak analysis of poisonings linked to the honeycombed fungi in March and April of last year. The outbreak sickened 51 people who ate at the same restaurant, sending four to the emergency department. Three were hospitalized and two died. Though the health officials didn't name the restaurant in their report, state and local health departments at the time identified it as Dave’s Sushi in Bozeman. The report is published in the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (2 children)

People preparing or consuming wild foods should make sure to do the proper research. That is the only safe way to practice foraging. Very sad that people died because of this.

You’re 100% right. For the record these mushrooms were cultivated; not wild, but also from China which introduces its own concerns.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

How? You can't cultivate morels.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago

I thought the same until I recently learned otherwise:

Cultivating Coveted Morels Year-Round and Indoors

Jacob and Karsten Kirk, twins from Copenhagen, say they have devised a method to reliably grow morel mushrooms in a climate-controlled environment.

“When new buds emerge on trees and the ground warms with the advent of spring, foragers fan out through woodlands, scanning the leaf litter for morel mushrooms.

Arguably the most iconic of wild fungi, morels stand 3 to 6 inches tall and sport a signature cone-shaped lattice cap in shades of cream to chocolate brown. Prized for their nutty, earthy taste, they sell for as much as $50 a pound fresh and $200 a pound dried. They appear for just a fleeting few weeks — in New York, generally from late April to early June.

Experienced morel hunters return to well-guarded spots year after year, often exhibiting a form of selective hearing loss when asked where they collected their haul.

“There’s something about morels — they have a mystique that people are fascinated by,” said Gregory Bonito, a biologist studying morels and other fungi at Michigan State University. And unlike some wild mushrooms, which can be easily cultivated, morels have a quirky life cycle that makes them notoriously tough to grow, Dr. Bonito explained.

Cultivating morels isn’t impossible. Until 2008, at least one U.S. grower produced them commercially. And since about 2014, farmers in China have done it outdoors in the spring, but yields can be variable, Dr. Bonito said. He leads a small morel-farming project in Michigan and surrounding states funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. All the participating farmers but one grew at least one morel last year, he said, though this year’s numbers are ticking up.

But prospects for morels on demand appear to be looking up. In December, after four decades of research, Jacob and Karsten Kirk, twin brothers from Copenhagen, announced that they had devised a method to reliably cultivate hefty amounts of morels indoors, year-round, in a climate-controlled environment.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Good point. However the issue is a less developed food culture around these mushrooms than their mode of production/harvest. So I think the same logic applies here.