Stalking the Wild Mushroom
by Marian Segal

     Mushrooms can kill you, the Frenchman told author Peter Mayle,
newly transplanted to Provence from England.
     "That I could believe," Mayle wrote in A Year in Provence, but
it didn't explain the thigh-high rubber boot the Provenáal wore on
his right leg, or the man's nervous thrusting of a stick around the
roots of an old scrub oak tree "in the manner of a fencer expecting
a sudden and violent riposte."
     "This was a new and worrying aspect of the LubÇron," Mayle
wrote. "It was, as I already knew, a region full of strange things
and even stranger people. But surely mushrooms, even wild
mushrooms, didn't attack fully grown men."
     Perhaps not with an ÇpÇe, but, indeed, poisonous mushrooms can
wreak havoc on men, women and children. If ingested, their toxins
can cause stomach upset, dizziness, hallucinations, and other
neurological symptoms. The more lethal species can cause liver and
kidney failure, coma, and even death.
     As it happens, the Provenáal's immediate concern was not
poison: "He slapped the rubber [boot] with his wooden sword and
swaggered down toward me. D'Artagnan with a shopping basket ...
'Les serpents.' He said it with just the trace of a hiss. 'They are
preparing for winter. If you disturb them--ssst!--they attack. It
can be very grave.'"
     Here in the United States, Food and Drug Administration
biologist John Gecan worries less about "les serpents" than about
ignorance when it comes to harvesting wild mushrooms. Many edible
mushrooms have toxic "look-alike" species, Gecan says, and
untrained pickers often are woefully incompetent to distinguish the
bad from the good.

The Unskilled
     "People go out and harvest wild mushrooms without the foggiest
notion of what they're picking. They may know what mushrooms
they're looking for, but they may also mistakenly pick up toxic
look-alikes found in the same place," he says.
     Gecan, a mushroom expert with the agency's Center for Food
Safety and Applied Nutrition, says quite simply: "As a novice,
you'd better not go out and pick mushrooms, eat them, and expect to
live very long."
     FDA regulates commercially grown and harvested mushrooms,
which are cultivated in concrete buildings or caves, but there are
no systematic controls on individual gatherers harvesting wild
species.
     Some of the most deadly mushrooms produce toxic amanitins.
Among them is the genus Amanita, whose members have telltale common
names such as death angel, fool's mushroom, and destroying angel.
These, and less deadly species, may end up in gourmet shops, co-
ops, supermarkets, and restaurants, mistaken for their nontoxic,
edible look-alikes.
     Armed with illustrated books and a big jar of dried mixed
forest mushrooms imported from France, Gecan demonstrates how
difficult it can be to distinguish similar looking species. He
emphasizes that even experts can't know all there is to know to
identify every kind of wild mushroom, because of their great 
diversity.
     There are two general groups of fleshy fungi--ascomycetes and
basidiomycetes--which are differentiated by their spore-bearing
reproductive structures. Ascomycetes bear spores enclosed in a sac-
like cell called an ascus. They include the cup fungi, false
morels, and true morels. Basidiomycetes bear spores on one end of
a specialized cell called a basidium. This group is further broken
down into subgroups based on their spore-bearing structures and
include, among others, the chanterelles, gilled fungi (including
the "button" mushrooms commonly seen in supermarkets), and
puffballs.
     Gecan, whose primary expertise is identifying morels and their
look-alikes, illustrates the complexity of the task. He notes, for
example, that the edible bell morel Verpa conica and half-free
morel Morchella semilibera, and the poisonous early "false morel"
Verpa bohemica all have caps that look like a partially closed
parasol with vertical ridges and striations. The three can easily
be confused by an inexperienced harvester, as their distinguishing
features are not conspicuous.
     The edible half-free and bell morels both have eight spores
per ascus, but the stem on the half-free attaches halfway up inside
the cap, while the stem of the bell morel attaches at the very top
of the cap. The stem of the poisonous early false morel also
attaches at the very top of the cap, but it has only two to four
large spores per ascus.

The Unscrupulous
     Unskilled harvesters are not the only problem of the wild
mushroom trade; the lucrative market has generated its share of
unsavory characters.
     "There's such an economic gain to be had here that people are
going out knowingly including the toxic Verpa bohemica in their
harvest of edible morels. This was a serious contamination problem
in morels coming from India in the late 1980s," Gecan says. He
tells of an importer who admitted that some harvesters will pick up
anything that looks like a morel, adding that some pickers even
stuff them with stones to increase the weight.
     The wild mushroom business has also spawned violence. Some
wild mushrooms sell for $100 or more a pound, Gecan says, and armed
robberies are occurring in the Pacific Northwest, where the
combination of heavy-covered forests and moist environment yields
a plentiful crop.

The Evidence
     FDA first became involved with analyzing wild mushrooms when
agency field inspectors sent samples to headquarters laboratories
following a poisoning outbreak in 1977. Four people suffered
abdominal pains, dizziness, vomiting, and fainting after eating
"veal morel" at a New York City restaurant. The morels, imported
from France and Switzerland, included Gyromitra esculenta
mushrooms, which produce the methylhydrazine derivative gyromitrin,
a toxin that can sometimes cause death. "It's basically one of the
components of rocket fuel," Gecan says.
     He explains that "Gyromitra is picked and canned and eaten in
France and elsewhere in Europe with no ill effects, because the
chefs over there know how to prepare them."
     In July 1978, FDA issued an import alert directing sampling of
morel shipments from the French and Swiss firms implicated in the
1977 outbreak. In 1980, analysis of samples of French morels
collected by FDA's Denver district showed they contained Gyromitra.
     In 1987, a food poisoning investigation by FDA's Detroit
district led to a shipment of dried "morels" packed by two firms in
India. The mushrooms contained Gyromitra as well as another toxic
species, Verpa bohemica.
     In December 1990, the agency identified Verpa bohemica in
samples of two lots of dried "morels" from a third French firm.
     The agency's current import alert instructs the districts to
sample morels shipped from all the firms implicated in previous
poisoning outbreaks and send them to Gecan for identification.
Also, morel shipments from other firms--particularly in France,
Switzerland and India--must be examined for proper labeling and
packaging and, if necessary, sampled. When toxic species are
identified, the shipment is refused entry.

The Survey
     To determine the extent of the problem of toxic wild mushrooms
in the U.S. market, Gecan and his FDA colleague, biologist Stanley
Cichowicz, directed a two-year survey of wild mushrooms in
commercial distribution. They published their results in the August
1993 Journal of Food Protection.
     For the survey, 10 FDA districts were directed to collect
samples of specific species of canned, dried and fresh imported and
domestic mushrooms. About two dozen species were collected at ports
of entry and from gourmet shops, supermarkets, health food stores,
and other commercial establishments. They included morels, false
morels, shiitakes, straw mushrooms, chanterelles, hiratakes, and
others, as well as mixed mushrooms.
     Of the 344 samples collected, toxic mushrooms were found only
in the morels and the mixed mushrooms. Of the 42 morel samples
collected, nine contained toxic species. Seven of the nine were
from France, the other two from India. Of 13 mixed mushroom samples
collected, two--both from France--contained toxic species.
     Although all the toxic mushrooms identified in the survey
originated overseas, potential problems exist with wild mushrooms
harvested here at home as well. Except for Michigan, where wild
mushroom growers and harvesters must be licensed, and Illinois,
which prohibits the sale of wild-picked mushrooms through
wholesale, retail or food service establishments, the states do not
regulate the sale of wild mushrooms. And FDA has no regulatory
authority for products not sold in interstate commerce.
     During the survey, Gecan received a quart canning jar of
mushrooms an FDA investigator bought in a Chicago bar. The
investigator learned from the bar owner that some local women who
had immigrated from Poland had been hired to pick the mushrooms in
a Wisconsin woods. The mushrooms were packed in brine in mason jars
and sold at local bars.
     The mushrooms turned out to be okay, Gecan says, but both the
possibility of toxic mushrooms and the brine levels were cause for
worry. Improper processing could have caused botulism  toxicity.

New World, New Species
     Gecan says that immigrants who commonly pick mushrooms in
their native lands have particular problems when they continue that
tradition here. The mushrooms in this country may look like the
ones they or their parents and grandparents picked in the old
country. But appearances can be deceiving.
     Cichowicz explains that North America has perhaps four times
as many mushroom species as Europe, so European immigrants think
they're picking the same mushrooms as back home, when actually
they're harvesting toxic look-alikes.
     Immigrants from other parts of the world have similar
problems. Gecan tells of a group of Koreans in the Pacific
Northwest who, looking for straw mushrooms, picked death caps
instead. "They cleaned them, cooked them, and ate them, and all
needed liver transplants," he says.
     It gets still more complex, Cichowicz says, because even
within different parts of this country, a particular mushroom grown
under certain conditions--a certain type of soil or nutrient
source--will look one way, whereas the same species grown under
different conditions will have a slightly different appearance. He
says a species grown east of the Rockies might be edible, whereas
west of the Rockies it might not.

The Clubs
     Not all wild mushroom harvesters are unskilled or
unscrupulous. There are mycology (mushroom) clubs in the United
States with extremely knowledgeable members that organize forays
and gain continuing experience from their field work. Gecan
recommends that interested amateurs contact a club through the
North American Mycological Association.
     He says, "Experienced collectors should go out in the field,
know every mushroom they pick, and if there's a question in their
mind, should chuck it away."
     The common button mushroom Agaricus bisporus sold in retail
markets is commercially grown under controlled conditions and
presents no hazard of contamination with toxic mushroom species.
But because there are no absolute guarantees that toxic mushrooms
won't reach the market, Gecan endorses the maxim "buyer beware."
Because of increased demand, retail food stores are offering more
and more varieties of wild mushrooms, while their harvesting
remains largely unregulated.
     That is not to say that Americans need forever forgo the taste
delights of wild mushrooms. Gecan says that although toxic morel
look-alikes are occasionally found in commercial mushrooms, they
are rarely fatal. In addition, individuals have different
thresholds for the toxins, so that some people might display only
mild symptoms or none at all. Someone who gets sick from eating
wild mushrooms should go to a hospital emergency room for
treatment.
     These considerations are reminiscent of Peter Mayle's mind-set
as he pondered a gift from his friend:
     "He had been in the forest since six o'clock, and he had a
present for us. From behind his back he produced his old checked
cap, bulging  with wild mushrooms. He gave us his favorite recipe--
oil, butter, garlic, and chopped parsley--and told us a dreadful
story about three men who had died after an ill-chosen mushroom
supper. A neighbor had found them still at the table with wide,
staring eyes--Monsieur Sanchez gave us a demonstration, rolling his
eyes back in his head--completely paralyzed by malignant fungus.
But we were not to worry, he said. He would stake his life on the
mushrooms in his cap. Bon appÇtit!" n

Marian Segal is a member of FDA's public affairs staff.