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Offlineasukawashere
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Registered: 10/16/15
Posts: 89
Last seen: 7 years, 9 months
Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling)
    #22558120 - 11/22/15 12:34 AM (8 years, 4 months ago)

Hi All! The photos are at the bottom, because I'm an evil conniving sort of thing that wants to make you read first. :evil:

I have a tendency to get verbose, but please bear with me. the tl;dr is: anybody ever catch any flack in CT with health inspectors and your foraged mushrooms, and can you provide any reference info on the subject of mushroom farming/foraging regulations in CT? (The latter is vaguely rhetorical; CT law is extremely vague on the subject; I know this from my own countless hours of wasted googling superpowers.)

I mostly forage for my own personal use (and I use the term "forage" very loosely, since over half the things I forage come out of my backyard), but I do have a table at the local farm market where I sell off extra garden produce (you know, like when the tomatoes hit critical mass and they're ripening faster than you can eat them?), not as a for-profit thing so much as it is a way to get out of the house and talk with the public at large about sustainable food, organic gardening, etc. It's a subject I'm passionate about and it's a lot of fun. At the end of the day, if I get back the $20 fee for the booth and $5 towards gas, I'm content.

Anyway, sometimes when I end up bringing home a bumper crop of mushrooms (this isn't hard to do, seeing as there's only one me, and I can only eat so much, and when your friend asks you to grab some chicken of the woods next time you see it and then doesn't have time to pick it up... you get the picture), I offer a few portions of mushrooms to spread the mycological love. It's always easy-to-ID, fairly safe stuff (i.e. chicken of the woods, hen of the woods, oysters, black-staining polypore... the stuff that doesn't exactly take a mycology degree to safely pick out). I never put anything in my mouth unless I'm 100% confident on the I.D., but I never put anything out at the farm market unless I'm 150% confident, and I always accompany it with verbal instructions on cooking, and, in the case of something like Laetiporus, some little half-page pamphlets detailing that some people have allergic reactions, always sample small portions first, you should always cook it thoroughly because it causes digestive upset raw, etc. The usual caveats with foraged mushrooms. At no point in the past two seasons has any health inspector ever even looked twice at my stand, including just last week, when the inspector of the day walked right past my front-and-center display of oyster mushrooms sourced from my backyard logs.

Now, CT requires no permits or licenses or anything of the sort to sell, and I quote, "raw produce" at a farmer's market. The law says plenty about what is and isn't raw produce in terms of cooking, processing, slicing, packaging, etc. but it doesn't make distinctions along the lines of "this vegetable is safe and this one isn't." (I'm using the term "vegetable" from a legal standpoint here, not a taxonomic one.) It does not require—and I have an email exchange with a state DOAG official to back this up—that vegetables be produced on a commercial farming facility to be sold at farmer's markets (it also doesn't require you produce them yourself; there are tons of stands at the local markets where farmers who only grow a few things beef up their tables with goods from other local farms).

Today, however, this blatantly mycophobic inspector (not the usual guy) comes in and immediately takes issue with the fact that *le gasp!* there are mushrooms on my table! (The horror!:eek:) Today's offerings were a whopping 3/4 lb. of maitake and one lb. of oysters, the latter of which were semi-deliberately cultivated in my own backyard (read: my diligent depositing of oyster stem butts around the logs finally paid off and now every third log on the property is flushing with oysters this fall—and between Irene and Sandy, there are plenty of logs to go around!). He spends like a half hour trying to bully me into submission, and keeps insisting that "he's only here to enforce the laws; he doesn't make them" despite his astounding inability to provide any copy of any regulation I'm supposed to be complying with (instead, he acts like I'm making his life exceedingly difficult by asking to see these supposed regulations before bowing down to his will—personally, I don't believe that's an unreasonable request on my part).

All he can cough up is some vague UDSA blurb on mushrooms coming from "approved sources" with no definition on what qualifies as such, and his reply to my inquiry as to how one became an approved source was more or less "you don't." Now, I know that can't be true, because there are in fact commercial mushroom farms in CT, so either there's some approval process that he won't disclose (anybody know what that might be?) or there's no real legislature defining it, in which case, he has no grounds to tell me I'm any less qualified than the bazillion or so people in Appalachia or the PNW who make a living foraging mushrooms—and doubly so given that in this instance, we're not even talking about food foraged from public lands, but rather harvested from my own property and other privately owned grounds, with permission of the owner.

He naturally trotted out all the classic mycophobic rhetoric. Our exchanges were along the lines of the following (I'm paraphrasing, though in retrospect I wish I'd recorded this):

"How do I know that this mushroom is what you say it is?"
"I'd be happy to explain [spoiler: he didn't want to hear about the decurrent gills on oyster mushrooms], but by that logic, how do you know the arugula that guy over there is selling is really arugula?"

"What degrees or certifications do you have?"
"Can you point me to the legislature requiring such certification or tell me which program I have to enroll in to obtain it? Would some sort of document from a local mycological authority to the effect that I have basic field ID skills suffice?" [apparently, I was missing his point…]

"But are we just supposed to take your word for it that this is a good mushroom?"
"I'd be happy to provide you with specimens to take to a mycologist of your choosing to confirm my identification" [more spoilers: he wasn't interested in the specimens, either]

"But there's much more risk with mushrooms"
"What about if I decided to plant a garden full of peanuts, would that be okay?"
"If your zoning permitted peanut farming that would be fine" [recall, I have communication from the state to the effect that non-commercial growing operations are permitted at farm markets]
"But peanuts have caused numerous fatal allergic reactions, and there's no verified record of, say, a Laetiporus allergy inducing fatal anaphylaxis. On what grounds are you claiming mushrooms have a greater risk?" [he didn't have any good answer to this, so he deflected back to that commercial farm bit]

He eventually said something to the effect that I was welcome to come to his office on Monday to hash it out. I suspect he doesn't really think I'm willing to go that far, but I have nothing scheduled on Monday (the perks of freelance work!), so I'm going to call his bluff and show up with something from a local PhD to confirm my identifications that anyone with three brain cells to string together can make, and printout of that exchange with the state DOAG guy on commercial farms, and any regulation I can turn up in the next 24 hours (that's the part where I desperately need any input from you guys!)

So anyway, if you're still with me, here's a photo of my apparently incredibly-hazardous-to-the-public's-wellbeing hen of the woods:

(Seriously, a polypore that looks like that at the foot of an oak tree in November? Clearly we need some PhDs if we want to have a prayer of determining what that thing might be!)

And a closeup of the gills on one of my incredibly vicious life-threatening oyster mushrooms:


And here's a completely random-ass Hericium that I encountered the other day that was regrettably past the harvesting stage by the time I got to it:

That log has at least been seared into my memory banks for future reference. I want me some lion's manes!

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InvisibleRuralAnomaly
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22558808 - 11/22/15 09:33 AM (8 years, 4 months ago)

wow.  quite the read.  you weren't kidding about the verbose bit lol
if anyone else is wondering, its worth the effort if you care about this kind of thing.

but, i see where that energy is coming from.  i'd be majorly irked too with an exchange like the above.

i'm sorry i can't really contribute to the cause.  the only thought that might add to the discussion is that usually there are restrictions on gathering on state lands and then selling but i don't think this is your case at all.  he may question where you gathered them however, and may make claims that the source needs to be 'clean and toxin free'

(ask him about pesticides and fertilizers when he does hehe)

please do let us know how this pans out

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OfflineLost Geometer B
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: RuralAnomaly]
    #22559301 - 11/22/15 11:45 AM (8 years, 4 months ago)

I know nothing about this, but a brief internet search tells me that the USDA has a model food code, which states are expected to follow more or less, which used to say that mushroom foragers had to be "approved" (the process of which is left up to the state). The more recent versions seem to say that restaurants serving wild mushrooms need to be "approved". Tell us how this works out. (And don't pick fights with bureaucrats.)

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Offlineasukawashere
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Registered: 10/16/15
Posts: 89
Last seen: 7 years, 9 months
Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: Lost Geometer B]
    #22559926 - 11/22/15 02:31 PM (8 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

Lost Geometer B said:
I know nothing about this, but a brief internet search tells me that the USDA has a model food code, which states are expected to follow more or less, which used to say that mushroom foragers had to be "approved" (the process of which is left up to the state). The more recent versions seem to say that restaurants serving wild mushrooms need to be "approved". Tell us how this works out. (And don't pick fights with bureaucrats.)




Sometimes you have to pick fights with bureaucrats. Generally I'm the live and let live type, but since he decided to start something, I'm inclined to finish it. If nothing else I figure documenting this might help someone else in the future.

That is indeed the line of USDA code he trotted out, but like I said, CT has zero regulations in place to define an "approved" source, so I'm not convinced he has the grounds to declare me "unapproved." This wouldn't be an issue if the state had something like a forager field ID course that offered a straightforward certification process or even a single line in the code that defines the words "approved source." CT has draconian food laws (seriously, the town police here shut down a little kid's roadside lemonade stand last year for not having a food permit... that's how bad it is! And I wouldn't be the least bit shocked if it was the same guy behind that, too...) but last I checked, in America, if an activity wasn't specifically prohibited by law/statute/regulation/code/whathaveyou, we as free people are, well, free.

Quote:

RuralAnomaly said:
wow.  quite the read.  you weren't kidding about the verbose bit lol

but, i see where that energy is coming from.  i'd be majorly irked too with an exchange like the above.

i'm sorry i can't really contribute to the cause.  the only thought that might add to the discussion is that usually there are restrictions on gathering on state lands and then selling but i don't think this is your case at all.  he may question where you gathered them however, and may make claims that the source needs to be 'clean and toxin free'

(ask him about pesticides and fertilizers when he does hehe)

please do let us know how this pans out




Yes, well, I'm an occasionally a freelance writer as needs may. Verbose is sort of my default mode; I can't help it. ^.^'

He did already ask where the mushrooms came from, and didn't seem terribly impressed with my flat response of "a log in my backyard." Toxins didn't seem to be a problem for him, though. As I said he kept getting hung up on that commercial farm thing, and also that classic irrational ZOMG IT'S A MUSHROOM EVERYONE WILL DIE:eek: response.

He'd be hard-pressed to find toxins on my property, given that I live in a suburban residential zone that borders on neighboring towns I would define as outright rural, my idea of "pesticide" is a solution of rosemary & garlic extracts to ward off peach leaf curl, and my idea of "fertilizer" is well-composed horse manure and ashes from the fireplace...

I will, however, keep everybody informed as to what happens. I do think this is a very relevant issue to foragers, especially in the New England area.

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InvisibleRuralAnomaly
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22560464 - 11/22/15 04:35 PM (8 years, 4 months ago)

the fertilizer etc part was in rebuttal, seeing how commercial ag ops often use it heavily, you could ask him if he does an analysis on the other vendor's apples to make sure they're not coated in malathialon

i wish you success

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Offlineasukawashere
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Registered: 10/16/15
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: RuralAnomaly]
    #22560905 - 11/22/15 06:36 PM (8 years, 4 months ago)

After several additional hours of wading through CT DOAG blather, I turned up this little piece of legislation. Some relevant quotes:

"Farm products" means any fresh fruits, vegetables, mushrooms, nuts, shell eggs, honey or other bee products, maple syrup or maple sugar, flowers, nursery stock and other horticultural commodities, livestock food products, including meat, milk, cheese and other dairy products… or any of the products listed in this subdivision that have been processed by the participating farmer, including, but not limited to, baked goods made with farm products."

"'Connecticut-grown' means produce and other farm products that have a traceable point of origin within Connecticut;" [Note the absence of restrictions on which lands/facilities that produce may come from—arguably, any old stretch of woods inside state borders could be construed as "a point of origin within Connecticut."]

Looking up the section (q) of section 1-1 of those general statutes where it defines "farm" and "agriculture" yields this:

"Connecticut General Statutes, Sec. 1-1 (q) Except as otherwise specifically defined, the words "agriculture" and "farming" shall include… raising or harvesting any agricultural or horticultural commodity…or any agricultural commodity, including lumber, as an incident to ordinary farming operations or the harvesting of mushrooms… handling, planting, drying, packing, packaging, processing, freezing, grading, storing or delivering to storage or to market, or to a carrier for transportation to market, or for direct sale any agricultural or horticultural commodity as an incident to ordinary farming operations, or, in the case of fruits and vegetables, as an incident to the preparation of such fruits or vegetables for market or for direct sale…"

A few points:
1.) The above does not specify any commercial designation ("for sale" does not inherently mean "for sale for profit"), nor do the words "commercial" or "commerce" appear at any point in either example of bureaucratic blather. Combined with my email discussion with the state to clarify that "hobby" farms/non-commercial ventures are permissible, I don't see how Mr. Inspector has any room to complain about, well, anything.

2.) Both specify mushroom HARVESTING as a farm activity, not necessarily "cultivation and harvesting" together or "cultivation for harvest" or any variation thereof. The conjunction "or" in "raising or harvesting" implies that the two are not mutually dependent on each other. Foraging is a type of harvesting, so I don't see how either statute blocks me from foraging even state lands and offering the produce at a farm market, much less mushrooms from my backyard.

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InvisibleRuralAnomaly
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22561438 - 11/22/15 09:32 PM (8 years, 4 months ago)

well, that looks like you can politely send 'em packing, and if they persist maybe complain about harassment.

i would only caution you on your last point about state lands.  that may be true, you'll have to look that one up too

it is not true here in Ohio.

we had a similar type discussion awhile back about where you can hunt and it seemed to vary quite a bit from state to state.

I have called ODNR on more than one occasion to clarify where i can pick for my own consumption.
from their website:
Mushroom hunting is permitted at all state forests in Ohio, encompassing more than 200,000 acres. Many state parks also allow mushroom hunting. However, individuals interested in hunting should look for a notice posted at the area headquarters indicating that the collecting of mushrooms is permitted or contact park officials for specific rules and restrictions that may apply to individual parks as off-trail hiking without a special permit is prohibited at certain state parks. Mushrooms can only be picked for personal use…no commercial harvesters are permitted.


once again, thanks for the update and good luck with your hearing.

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: RuralAnomaly]
    #22562194 - 11/23/15 05:20 AM (8 years, 4 months ago)

Quote:

RuralAnomaly said:
well, that looks like you can politely send 'em packing, and if they persist maybe complain about harassment.

i would only caution you on your last point about state lands.  that may be true, you'll have to look that one up too

it is not true here in Ohio.

Mushrooms can only be picked for personal use…no commercial harvesters are permitted.





That legal hazy ground is exactly why I keep off state grounds in general (except for personal use). If the butts and spore prints of those "personal use" oysters happened to end up stuffed into a crevasse in a log in my backyard...and then oysters happened to grow on those logs that I happened to sell at a farmers' market... well, that's still not really collecting for (direct) commercial use. I also, at that point, seriously question the characterization of those oysters as "wild" mushrooms. I'd compare it to a volunteer tomato plant that popped up in the garden where you tossed a tomato that went bad. It's not quite deliberate culturing like the logs with shiitake plug spawn by my greenhouse (which, thanks to our obscenely drought-like summer conditions, are refusing to fruit for me despite having had a year now to colonize), but "wild" at that point is something of a case of semantics.

I'm a crazy aquarium nut as well as a crazy mushroom nut, etc. and I have an even more crazy fascination with aquatic plants, so I'm well-acquainted with the concept that collecting botanical specimens "from private property with consent of the owner" for any purpose is a matter that the state has zero capacity to interfere with save for when an environmental protection law creates a competing interest (i.e. with regard to endangered, threatened or special interest species).

Save for raging mycophobia, from a legal perspective the concept should be more or less the same. I seriously doubt Mr. Inspector would have pitched a fit if I'd been offering pints of berries plucked from wild, invasive wineberry bushes. (I can see it now: "But how can we be sure these are the right berries? Am I supposed to take your word for it?")

I have every intention of having my camera recording every minute I spend in this guy's office, partly because of the potential for harassment (he was already skirting along the edges of outright threatening me last Saturday, and if he tries it again I want evidence) and partly because I have this (admittedly somewhat ridiculous) intense phobia of authority figures that, I guarantee, will have me bursting into tears at some point this afternoon (call it exposure therapy?), and I'll want to re-reference anything he says verbatim to rebut it in writing if I have to. It can be really, really hard to come across as a rational individual while devoting most of your energy to not sobbing uncontrollably in terror.

…But also because he strikes me as exactly the sort of jerk who might try to shut down my First Amendment rights, too, and I want to see what he does when he knows he's on the record.

Edited by asukawashere (11/23/15 08:04 PM)

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22568229 - 11/24/15 01:19 PM (8 years, 4 months ago)

So, here's the update guys:

• I have 25 minutes of footage of my conversations with two town health inspectors who magically turned around in their rhetoric for the camera yesterday, where now they're not questioning my ability to identify mushrooms at all, but rather chastising me for having the sheer nerve to question them when they challenged the presence of my mushrooms, and more or less implying it was my fault for "making [him] look like a bully" (I'm reasonably certain he did that all on his own) and 'some guy "called me an idiot"' (I don't know who said that, but I was certainly thinking it!). Gone were the threats and the implications that I had no right to be at the farm market at all. They did imply that I caused things to "escalate" when I asked them to produce legislation to back up their assertions and pretty much said it's their job to make calls on the field and figure out the regulations later (and here I thought we lived in a land of "innocent until proven guilty"). I will gladly upload the footage to youtube if anyone wants to listen to it, but it's largely meaningless waffle interspersed with me talking in a high pitched, choked voice trying very hard hard not to sob in terror. They maintained that I'm not supposed to be selling mushrooms until they give me some approval, and, for the sake of not making things difficult on the whole, I agreed to give them a week to ask for clarification from the state.

• I also just had a far, far more heartening conversation with a state DOAG official (the same guy from whom I initially got the info regarding non-commercial farm market stands) who basically agreed with all of the points I previously mentioned (see a few posts up^) about the language regarding mushrooms in the statutes, including about foraging, and conveyed that he believed the town officials simply needed education (which I wholeheartedly agreed with). He also agreed that I had grounds to ask for clarification regarding regulations when the inspector asked me to comply with his demands. And he said he'd be willing to come to my place, look at a couple of grow logs, snap some photos, and write something to the effect that I appear to have a mushroom growing operation. He said the state straight-up does not define the term "commercial farm." I figure if it isn't defined, I could sell one mushroom for a dollar and claim to be a "commercial farm." It'd still be a negative profit because it cost a lot more than a dollar to make or get the mushroom, but I suppose it could be argued that I'm engaging in "commerce."

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22629506 - 12/08/15 10:49 AM (8 years, 3 months ago)

If anybody's still following this, the town folks sent me this last week (I've highlighted a few key phrases and redacted some names):

Quote:

Good Morning [me],

Let me begin by saying we want the farmer’s market to succeed and recognize the importance of providing locally grown fruit and produce to the residents of Fairfield. We have no objection to you selling your vegetables at the market, the issue was only your mushrooms.  The aim and purpose of your local health department is to promote and ensure through the enforcement of regulations the health and well-being of the community we serve. This is spelled out specifically in Connecticut General Statute 19a-200, that the local health director is to preserve the health of the community. The patrons who visit the farmer’s market assume and want assurances that the food being offered is safe, especially when they see a public health sanitarian conducting inspections on site to ensure that.

I have researched the question with the Department of Public Health Food Protection Program, Department of Consumer Protection and Connecticut Department of Agriculture. Is there a simple answer to this question? Unfortunately, no but listed below is what I found.

1. The farmer’s market in [place] is not a State of Connecticut  Department of Agriculture certified Farmer’s Market. What does this mean in practical terms? Basically the regulations allowing a farmer’s kiosk, the ability to sell jams, jellies, and other pickled items made in an unlicensed residential farm kitchen are not allowed. The ability of a local farmer to sell his/her farm products to the public at an uncertified farmer’s market would now require a license by local health and would fall entirely under our regulations. A farmer selling farm products off his/her property would be no different than a store selling only produce both would need to be licensed. The farmer would still retain the ability to sell his/hers unprocessed farm products on their farm property without licensing by us. [Please note that those last two sentences say almost the opposite thing]

2. The Farmer’s Market Reference Guide, published by the State of Connecticut, Department of Agriculture, advises that when determining whether an entity meets the definition of farming, or if they are a farm or if what they are doing is agriculture, we should refer to Section 1.1(q) for definitions and pay particular attention to the last sentence in the paragraph which states “Nothing herein shall restrict the power of the local zoning authority under chapter 124.” Verbal communication with [the same DOAG guy I talked to] with Ct. Agriculture, stated that zoning could be used to designate what is farming and agriculture. To meet the Federal designation of a farmer/farm there is a minimum monetary threshold you must exceed which is approximately $1,500.00, per verbal communication with [the same guy]. [These are all distinctions made for tax purposes, however]

3. The question of selling mushrooms grown in your backyard is not clear cut, and the regulations have not adapted or “caught up” to your operation. The Department of Consumer Protection advises that it should come from an “approved source” which is defined as under government inspection [the definition of "approved" he handed me previously included no mention of such]. The State of Connecticut, Food Protection Program advises that under no circumstances should mushrooms be sold to a food service establishment, and that we should get a legal opinion from the Attorney General’s Office on whether it can be offered for sale at all [this was based on an email exchange I have a copy of, which cited no regulations whatsoever—it's apparently just someone's opinion]. [gradient:#FFAA00,#FFAA00]In either case they could offer no clear cut regulation that would prevent a farmer from selling mushrooms.[/gradient] This is not to say that there isn’t a real need for regulating this type of agriculture and there is legal precedence for doing so. Even in a farmer’s market in order for fish to be sold it must come from a licensed commercial fisherman and the same is true for shellfish recognizing the inherent risks associated with harvesting, and proper storage of this food verses vegetables. [Clearly, fish and mushrooms are practically twins! Why, everyone knows that mushrooms will spoil and sicken people if you leave them on the counter overnight!]

We want the farmer’s market to succeed and recognizing that there are currently no regulations in place for mushroom farming we propose the following.

1. Arrange for [that same DOAG guy] to conduct an inspection of your operation confirming in a letter to us that you are adhering to generally good practices. [You know, those "good practices" outlined by the state Dept. of Agriculture… oh wait… those don't exist.]

2. You may not sell to any food service establishments [says what regulation?]

3. You must list with us and update with changes as to what species by scientific name you will be selling. [Because, after all, they require all farms to provide lists and updates of every last thing they might grow… wait… that's not true either!]

4. You may not forage for any mushrooms or food products. [I call bullshit on this one, guys. Half my table this time of year is "foraged" plant species that grow around my property like garlic mustard, chickweed, sheep sorrel, spicebush twigs (I <3 spicebush tea). Despite their repeated assertion that they "have no objection to [me] selling [my] vegetables at the market," they obviously are trying to run me out at this point.]




MY REPLY WILL BE MY NEXT POST

Edited by asukawashere (12/11/15 03:26 PM)

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22629584 - 12/08/15 11:19 AM (8 years, 3 months ago)

So I sent back the following and CCed the town's Health Dept. director, the DOAG guy, and the first selectman (who had already gotten an angry letter from a concerned citizen—one of my patrons–regarding the subject of Mr. inspector's heavy-handed enforcement of "rules" and was thus peripherally aware of it):

Quote:

Mr. [town health guy],

I believe we all share a desire to ensure that the people of Fairfield and surrounding areas have access to safe, healthy food. Certainly, I am well aware that that is the function of your department, and it is indeed an important thing. What I believe we are largely disagreeing over is what constitutes safe, healthy food. It is my belief that this is primarily a result of a lack of information on your part as to the particulars of mushroom cultivation and foraging (I only brought up the latter because I have customers asking me for chanterelles and morels, two species which cannot be cultivated deliberately with any reliability—but I will elaborate on that later).

You seem to be operating under the impression that mushrooms, as a whole, are somehow a "more dangerous" crop than other vegetables. This could not be further from the truth, and I vehemently disagree with your assertion that there may be "a real need for regulating this type of agriculture." While I take your point about selling raw meat commodities such as fish, and agree with it, I will also point out that those particular regulations are in place largely to ensure that meats are handled properly because they will spoil if not kept frozen/refrigerated. In this sense, there is no good comparison between a meat product like fish and vegetable produce such as mushrooms (certainly, my mushrooms will not spoil if you leave them on the counter for a few hours). While I could certainly perceive a possible need for regulating the cultivation of, for instance, the common button Agaricus you see in stores, as the substrate involved in producing those is largely composed of animal fecal matter, the cultivation of saprobic mushroom species on logs, sawdust, coffee grounds, or bark chips is no more inherently dangerous than planting a squash seed in the dirt. Acting as if it is any different can only be rooted in a uniquely American phenomenon known as mycophobia—the irrational belief that somehow mushrooms are all inherently dangerous. Fungus, I will point out, represents of an entire kingdom of organisms. Saying all mushrooms are dangerous is the literal equivalent of saying all plants are dangerous. And I hope I don't need to point out that basing public health policies on a phobia that has little basis in reality is patently ridiculous.

Arguing that mushrooms are hazardous because of some perceived risk of contamination with poisonous species is equally as productive as arguing that we should regulate and inspect every tomato because someone might mistake a tomato for deadly nightshade, a closely related toxic plant that occasionally pops up as a weed in fields. Anyone with a little bit of basic botanical research can tell the difference between the two. Are there poisonous mushrooms? Absolutely. Is it easy to avoid picking them? If you know what you're looking at, absolutely. Did you know, for instance, that the vast majority of mushroom poisoning incidences in the U.S. involve either small children who didn't know any better, or Asian immigrants. The former is always going to be an issue, but the latter is regrettably due to a very simple, easy-to-prevent mistake. In Asia, a mushroom species called Volvariella volvacea ("straw paddy mushroom") is a popular foraged commodity. Foraging for Volvariella in Asia isn't particularly risky because the species makeup of wild mushrooms there is different from what we have here. In the U.S., we have a species complex that bears an unfortunate resemblance to the Volvariella—Amanita virosa, the destroying angel, which is responsible for the majority of fatal mushroom poisonings in the U.S. (a figure that, I will point out, typically consists of a single digit in any given year—the same cannot be said of death rates from things like food allergies; there is a strong case to be made that peanuts, a vegetable, are orders of magnitude more hazardous than edible mushrooms as a crop). First-generation Asian immigrants come here, see an Amanita, and think it's the same as the Volvariella from back home. But no forager with basic background knowledge of the U.S.'s native species is likely to make that mistake. A. virosa and its close relatives are pretty simple to identify—and thus avoid—in the field. Certainly I would never go foraging for Volvariella, even though my mycological skills are probably up to the task. There are much safer mushrooms to be had.

As an illustrative point, take the polypore mushrooms: this is a massive taxonomic grouping with hundreds if not thousands of species in the U.S. alone. It is also a category which contains some of the most prized edible and medicinal fungi in the world: the coveted maitake (Grifola frondosa) with its anti-tumor properties, the chicken of the woods (Laetiporus spp.), reishi (Ganoderma spp.)—it's name in Chinese means "immortal mushroom" because of its numerous documented health benefits, the lesser-known but delicious black-staining polypore (Meripilus giganteus), and so on. Of all the species of polypores known to occur in the U.S., there is exactly one known toxic species: Hapalopilus nidulans. It's tough and leathery when mature, so you'd have to be severely lacking in common sense to want to eat one. It also turns violently purple if you splash a little KOH (or other strongly alkaline solution) on it, which makes it easy to isolate. If the polypore in question has no reaction to KOH or turns some other color, it is not H. nidulans and can be regarded as, at the very least, not toxic. (That statement doesn't hold true on other continents, but it is true for North America). Whether or not you'd want to eat it is an entirely different matter, and that comes down to more specific field identification skills.

While I'll be the first person to tell you not to go foraging if you don't know exactly what you're doing, I do forage regularly for my own personal use, and certainly am well-versed in safe-to-forage plant & mushroom species. Among foragers, there are a few mushrooms known as the "foolproof four" due to their easy recognizability, lack of toxic lookalikes and/or simple ways to distinguish therefrom, and the sheer fact that you don't need a PhD to figure out what they are. These four are the giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea), the chanterelles (Cantharellus and Craterellus species), the morel (Morchella spp.), and the chicken of the woods (Laetiporus spp.). Of the four, the Laetiporus is the only one that can really be cultivated deliberately (and it is one of the mushrooms I grow). I could explain very simply the particulars of identifying any of the above, should you wish to hear it.

If you are not willing to take me at my word, however, I have discussed exactly this issue with Dr. [professor], the Asst. Chair of Biology at [a local university], who is currently conducting fungal research (and is a forager himself). I asked him last week to look at some of my home-grown mushrooms in order to provide verification to you, should you require, that they were exactly what I said they were. He not only conveyed that he was absolutely comfortable in saying my mushrooms were precisely what I said, but he also noted that even if I had sourced them from the wild there's nothing out there they could easily be mistaken for that would be harmful to consume—these are, I reiterate, not species you need a PhD to safely identify. He also read over the little informational pamphlets I hand out to my mushroom customers (I provided a samples of these to you on Monday 11/23) and was willing to vouch for the accuracy of the statements within. If you would like to contact him directly on the matter, he can be reached via email at [email] or via phone at [number].

People in other states make entire careers of foraging mushrooms. Any time you see a chanterelle or a morel on a restaurant's menu, it had to have been foraged from somewhere. A friend of mine told me she saw chanterelles for sale at Costco a little while back—those were without a doubt foraged. Whether that foraging takes place in Connecticut or Oregon is ultimately irrelevant to the edibility of the mushroom. I would actually contend that locally grown (or foraged) fresh mushrooms are healthier than ones that have to be shipped in from across the country by sheer virtue of the fact that they're fresher. And taste is also a factor. Just about every one of the shoppers who've bought my home-grown, fresh-picked oyster mushrooms come back the following week to tell me how they were the best they've ever tasted, orders of magnitude better than the week-old, dry-around-the-edges ones you can buy at Whole Foods, etc. They then often proceed to ask if I can get them other species (morels and chanterelles are the two I hear about the most). Your appeal regarding market patrons wanting safe foods falls somewhat flat in light of this—they seem to agree with me that mushrooms are in fact safe foods I can provide for them, given that they're asking me to bring even more. One patron already expressed great disappointment last weekend at the absence of mushrooms on my table, and others have expressed willingness to sign a petition to let me forage if that's what it takes to make your department look at the issue reasonably.

Your proposed blanket ban on foraging seems like a vast overreach as well, especially (but not solely) with regard to plants (to which, I will add, there's no legal basis in distinguishing between a foraged edible plant and a deliberately cultivated one), and when it comes to wild food growing on one's own property, the issue is further compounded. By your logic, I couldn't offer for sale the wineberries (Rubus pheonicolasius, a wild-type raspberry) that grow on the bushes along the edges of my property. I couldn't offer bunches of garlic mustard (Allaria petiolata), an amazing superfood that's also an invasive species (and, I will point out, every specimen I pull out of the ground and put on someone's table is one that isn't outcompeting our state's native species by reproducing unchecked). I couldn't offer my bundles of spicebush (Lindera benzoin) twigs, which are brewed into a delightful herbal tea that the Native Americans once used as a cold remedy, simply because I didn't plant the spicebush—it came with the property. Purslane (Portulaca oleracea) loves to volunteer itself in my squash beds, and it has the highest concentration of omega-3 fatty acids among all green plants (and is a superb source of them for those who don't eat fish). There's also sheep sorrel (Rumex acetosella), a wild sister species to cultivated garden sorrel (Rumex acetosa), that my patrons adore—it's got a tasty lemony zing and plenty of vitamins. I actually go out of my way to weed out the other weeds that try to compete with my sheep sorrel, so it could be argued that I "cultivate" that species instead of "foraging" it. None of these plants are "dangerous." They're simple to identify. They're good for you and all of them can be found in abundance on my measly two acres. (Also, I will point out that I am not the only vendor at the summer [market name] who offers purslane.) Furthermore, they're items that the commercial farm vendors don't offer (with that one exception of the purslane), which brings both thoroughly welcomed diversity to Fairfield shoppers' food options and gives me a nice niche to make a few sales and earn a few bucks to buy new seeds or some boards to build a new raised bed. If you are going to trust commercial farmers to distinguish between the plants they planted and the weeds that pop up in their fields, you can certainly trust me to distinguish one "weed" from another.

I am a well-respected amateur (in the sense that I'm lacking a formal degree, not knowledge) botanist of some renown in certain fields. People literally pay me to know what I'm talking about when it comes to the subject of plants. They cover my travel expenses to places as far away as D.C. just to have me come talk to them. My field botany skills are excellent. I am not some uneducated nitwit wandering through the woods, randomly plucking things on a whim and hoping they're not going to poison someone. I am a well-informed local food enthusiast with a passion for living off the land, who also enjoys sharing that enthusiasm with the community at large. Please do consider that blocking all foraged foods from the market is an outright disservice to the public, who want locally sourced, healthy food options. It makes absolutely zero sense to forbid everything. I will start a petition if necessary; there will be plenty of signatories expressing a desire for the inclusion of foraged foods at the market.

Do also consider that I am well aware that I am ultimately responsible for the edibility of the food I provide, and I am also entirely aware that were I to offer something poisonous, I would likely find myself in a lawsuit. In light of that, I have never and will never offer for sale anything, plant, fungus, or otherwise, which I do not have absolute confidence in the safety of. These are matters which I have researched in great detail. I make no guarantees regarding people's individual allergies (after all, you can't hold a peanut butter manufacturer liable when their clearly labeled product causes fatal anaphylaxis, which is something none of the mushrooms I offer have ever been documented to do—and you agreed two Saturdays ago that peanuts were a perfectly acceptable agricultural commodity), nor can I take responsibility for poor preparation on the part of the consumer (it's not Purdue's fault if I get sick because I didn't thoroughly cook their chicken like the package says to), but I will absolutely stand behind the assertion that the mushrooms I offer are safe to consume if prepared in a clean kitchen in accordance with the instructional pamphlets I hand out with them. I have already taken every measure to make sure that my customers experience mushrooms in a positive light, because if nothing else, it's bad for business (I use that term very loosely) and my own reputation if they don't.

With regards to your proposals, I counter with the following:

1. I have arranged with [DOAG guy] to have my production area inspected as you requested. I can tell you up front that all he's going to be able to say is that, yeah, there are some logs here, and some of them seem to be producing mushrooms (not all the species I have are currently in season). There really aren't established "good practices" involved in cultivating these saprobic mushrooms—you just take mushroom spawn and logs/bark chips, introduce the former to the latter, and set it all in an undisturbed location until such time as the spawn colonizes the wood. Then you either "force" the logs by soaking them overnight in tubs of ice water, or wait until a good rain leads them to fruit naturally. I typically go with the latter method, either because it's less effort (for the smaller logs) or because some of the logs I've colonized with species like oyster mushrooms and chicken of the woods are entirely too big to move around (or in the case of my hen-of-the-woods stump, embedded in the ground). It's not rocket science, there's not a lot of places where you can go wrong, and it's definitely not subject to any more inherent risk than planting a seed in the ground.

2. I don't think any food service establishment is going to actually want to buy mushrooms in the kinds of small portions I offer, so I suppose I can agree to that. However, if a food service establishment customer fails to identify themselves to me in order to obtain a purchase receipt in compliance with the law, you can't hold that against me.

3. I will gladly provide you with a list of all the species/genera that I currently have in cultivation and am willing to notify you should I add to that list. For the purposes of informing you about a subject you clearly (and by your own admission) don't have a lot of background knowledge in, I would also gladly add to that a list of mushroom species which are generally regarded as easy to forage for anyone with a basic understanding of field mycology (i.e. the metaphorical "low-hanging fruit" of the foraging world), as well as a brief outline of their characteristics and what distinguishes them from any potential lookalikes in the field. You are welcome to have that outline reviewed and verified by any foraging expert, mycologist, or biologist of your choosing, though I imagine Dr. [professor] would be willing to corroborate it as a starting point. [Local forager of some renown] is another expert you might want to consult. I would propose that offering foraged specimens of species on such a list does not constitute a particular hazard to public safety, and should therefore be permissible. Is it absolutely without risk of any sort? No, but neither is growing cantaloupe: you hear about melons and lettuce getting contaminated with Listeria often enough. I can tell you I'll take every available measure to make that risk as close to zero as I am humanly able to.

For the moment, the species I have in cultivation at home are as follows:
—Hen of the woods/maitake (Grifola frondosa)
—Chicken of the woods (Laetiporus sulfureus)
—Oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus species. Currently only P. ostreatus is fruiting but I also have in my possession cultures of P. djamor, P. pulmonarius, and P. citrinellus. I am likely to add P. eringii at some point in the future)
—Shiitake (Lentinula edodes)
—King Stropharia/wine cap (Stropharia rugosoannulata)
—Black-staining polypore (Meripilus giganteus)
Not all of the above have fruited as of yet—the summer drought set the shiitake logs back somewhat, for instance, but they're all working toward that end.

The following have also occurred of their own volition on my property, which I have not to date harvested for market but would consider offering if they fruited en masse:
—Chanterelle (Cantharellus sp.)
—Meadow mushroom (Agaricus campestris complex)
Both are simple field identifications with very little risk in misidentification when harvested at maturity. Chanterelles are easily distinguished by their orange color, "fruity" aroma, and false gills, the last of which is a feature unique to Cantharellus and Craterellus, two choice edible genera with no toxic members. Agaricus campestris is identified by its white to tan and smooth to fibrous cap, partial veil, and distinctive pink gills that darken to chocolate brown at maturity (the spore print is also chocolate brown). There are other Agaricus species (the portobello is one) which may be mistaken for A campestris, but the only (mildly) toxic member of the genus, A. xanthodermus, stains a vibrant yellow when cut at the base of the stem, a feature not shared by A. campestris and thus a reliable means of distinguishing the two. These sorts of distinctions may sound complicated to you, but it's as plain as night and day to me because I've taken the time to research and learn about the matter instead of just offering up a knee-jerk reaction that "it's a mushroom, so it must be dangerous."

4. I've already iterated my position on foraged foods in great detail. I would even be willing, solely for the sake of courtesy, to offer up a species list of "backyard foraged" plant crops that I typically offer, though I believe that asking me to list every last thing I might ever conceivably put on a farm market table places an undue and discriminatory burden on me, as you're certainly not asking the commercial operations about every last vegetable they're putting out for sale. And those other vendors aren't required to send you bulletins every time they offer a new item.

This discussion may ultimately become less relevant, as I've spoken to our market master, [market master], and he was willing to give consideration to having the market become a DOAG certified market, after which point your argument about the state's laws re: farmer's kiosks, etc. not applying would be rendered moot.

I will also point out that the use of zoning and profit margins to define agriculture exist for tax purposes, and not because the size of the operation has any bearing on food safety. I'm certainly making no claims from a tax perspective to be a commercial farm, nor am I looking for any deductions therefrom. As tax assessment is neither within the scope of your department's concerns nor the issue at hand, you've no substantial grounds to exclude me from qualifying as a farmer solely on the basis of zoning.

Your own definition of "approved" sources, which you handed me a photocopy of on 11/23—I'm not certain which document it ultimately hails from, reads that it "means acceptable to the regulatory authority based on a determination of conformity with principles, practices, and generally recognized standards." [italics own]. It says nothing about approved sources specifically being "under government inspection." As the regulatory authorities in question, both your department and the State, have no established principles, practices, or standards, you have no basis on which to make a determination that I'm not complying with them. Ergo, you don't have any evidence to support an assertion that I'm an "unapproved" source. Were you to attempt to issue a citation for such, and were I to dispute it in court, the burden of proof would be on you to provide evidence that I do not meet these standards, which as they do not exist, you would be unable to do. Frankly, that's a great deal more of a hassle than I would ever want to go to over a mere hobby and I imagine you have better things to do than argue over such matters, but I am entirely willing to take a stand for my rights if needs must. [yay civil disobedience!]

Please also note that I am adding our First Selectman to the list of persons this communication is being CCed to. I believe he has a right and obligation to hear my side of this debate, and if I have to send him a petition I'd rather it not hit him completely out of the blue.

[Signed, me]



Edited by asukawashere (12/10/15 02:22 PM)

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Invisiblerelic
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Registered: 10/14/14
Posts: 5,623
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22629629 - 12/08/15 11:36 AM (8 years, 3 months ago)

they are going to tl;dr you straight into regulation.  eliminate para 3, 4, 5; heavily edit 6, 7, & 8, imho.  i know you're a writer and not likely to accept this criticism easily from an unknown on the net--besides the fact that the length is a product of your enthusiasm, passion, and research--but it's conveyed with the best intention.

of course, i wish you the very best of luck in your endeavors and hope that you prevail to your satisfaction in this particular matter.

GL!

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: relic]
    #22630090 - 12/08/15 02:01 PM (8 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

relic said:
they are going to tl;dr you straight into regulation.  eliminate para 3, 4, 5; heavily edit 6, 7, & 8, imho.  i know you're a writer and not likely to accept this criticism easily from an unknown on the net--besides the fact that the length is a product of your enthusiasm, passion, and research--but it's conveyed with the best intention.

of course, i wish you the very best of luck in your endeavors and hope that you prevail to your satisfaction in this particular matter.

GL!



Thanks for the input! As you say, I'm a writer—if I couldn't take criticism, especially helpful criticism, I wouldn't last for long. As some of my readers do include "unknown[s] on the net," they have as much room to criticize my work as anybody else.

(I should also maybe mention that my focus is aquatic botany technically, but it's not like field botanical skills magically change the minute a plant strays further from the water LOL. There are a surprising number of edible aquatics, too!)

You're probably right about the tl;dr, though unfortunately it's a bit late since I already sent the thing the day after I received their proposal (they're ultimately trying to wage a war of attrition at this point, by simply drawing this out long enough that I give up or run out of mushrooms to sell for the year, so I'm firing back emails as quickly as I can).

I confess verbosity is something of a problem for me. Part of it stems from the fact that I read very quickly, so what may be a tl;dr for others doesn't always seem like that big a deal to me.

Passions aside, however, the problem is that these folks have already admitted to me that they pretty much know zilch about mushrooms. I can't make mycological references, nor can I counter raging mycophobia, if they don't have any information to start with. It's why I accused them of making "knee-jerk" reactions. While it's entirely possible that making an appeal to rationality towards an audience that is probably hell-bent on asserting its authority is a lost cause, it does at least give me grounds to prove later they're ignoring my information and attempts at creating dialogue. In short, I'm making a big fat paper trail. And throwing a ton of verifiable information at them hoping some of it will eventually stick.

Also, I kind of wanted to hammer home that I'm about six inches away from calling up all the local papers and news channels, rallying my peeps (read: anyone and everyone I can recruit on short notice), and staging a farmers' rights protest on the lawn of town hall. Without, y'know, outright threatening them with that.

I've got the DOAG guy coming Thursday morning to "assess" my "production area." I use the latter term very loosely. It's really just a bunch of tree trunks that fell down during hurricane Irene and superstorm Sandy, plus a couple of stray normal-sized grow logs over by the greenhouse. And a tub of king Stropharia spawn that I've yet to embed in a new raised bed.

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Invisiblerelic
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22637606 - 12/10/15 08:54 AM (8 years, 3 months ago)

understood.  today is your big day wrt to DOAG guy's visit; let us know how it goes!

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22638524 - 12/10/15 01:23 PM (8 years, 3 months ago)

Yesterday the town people sent the following to the biology professor I offered as a reference:
Quote:


I believe you may be familiar with [my name] and her quest to be able to sell cultivated and wild mushrooms at the local farmer’s market.  Unfortunately the current regulations are not able to adequately address what she is attempting to accomplish. A complicating factor is that the farmer’s market she participates in is not a certified farmer’s market and does not have the same privileges and exemptions. The main issues are she falls entirely under our regulations when she operates off-site and our regulations require that mushrooms must come from an approved source. [They have yet to actually show me these alleged "regulations" no matter how many times I ask. I'm forced to accept that the "regulations" are just their personal opinions, especially since our town statutes only address farming in terms of zoning.]

We can allow cultivating mushrooms in her backyard using commercial plugs along with some other stipulations [hey look, progress!], the problem occurs when she forages wild mushrooms and attempts to sell to the public.  As you may be aware foraging is not part of the legal definition of farming or farm products. [Um, I'm pretty sure it actually is, since that definition includes the term "harvesting mushrooms" without specifying where those mushrooms are growing—see a few posts back. Foraging is a type of harvesting.] The Food & Drug Administration Food Code of 2013 does address foraging for wild mushrooms and refers us to the Conference for Food Protection Guidance Document for a Model Wild Harvested Mushroom Program , April 16, 2012. [Read: that totally unenforceable pile of suggestions that the state has never codified into its laws] This draft plan has  rigorous requirements to meet to ensure that the person foraging is an “approved mushroom identifier”. [You know, those "approved mushroom identifiers" whose definition is the jurisdiction of the individual states] No such program currently exists in the State of Connecticut. [Exactly my point!]

[Town] Health Department would accept in lieu of those requirements a letter from you stating that [me, except they misspelled my name this time] has either successfully completed a course on identification of mushrooms, the appropriate harvest, storage and preparation of mushrooms, and has demonstrated competence by passing a field identification course or that she is personally known by you to possess the equivalent of the previously stated requirements.

Any questions please feel free to contact me.

—[Town health guy]



Edited by asukawashere (12/10/15 02:21 PM)

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: relic]
    #22638547 - 12/10/15 01:27 PM (8 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

relic said:
understood.  today is your big day wrt to DOAG guy's visit; let us know how it goes!




As for the DOAG guy's visit, he turned up, wandered around the property for 15 minutes and snapped a few photos. He also noted that he was astounded how much this minor issue has blown up so much—the CT DOAG commissioner is now following this, apparently—and commented to the effect that it's kind of sad that the town health guys are happy to sign off on imported products from China with zero oversight while harassing local market growers for no rational reason.

I'll post his report as soon as I get it.

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22638626 - 12/10/15 01:43 PM (8 years, 3 months ago)

The biology PhD sent the following back to them:

Quote:

Thank you for writing concerning [me].  As I am sure she explained to you, she contacted me to confirm her identification and the appropriateness of the supporting literature she supplied with her mushrooms—I was happy to do so since I do have  expertise in fungal biology that acquired during my doctoral education.  Both species [Grifola frondosa and Pleurotus ostreatus] she brought to me were identified correctly and the literature/advice she supplied to her customers was also correct and appropriate.  The two species in question are actually nearly impossible to confuse with anything else—certainly not with anything that is toxic.

I also understand that you have a responsibility to preserve the public safety and I did not actually know the “official” regulations concerning the harvesting and sale of wild mushrooms although I have seen them on sale many times at local specialty stores and farmers markets, along with the other wild foraged foods (ramps, fiddleheads, etc). [Newsflash: those fiddleheads ain't being government-inspected] Unfortunately, I can’t certify with personal knowledge the requirements you set out [because we don't have that kind of program here!] although from the conversation I had with [me] it is clear that she is knowledgeable on the subject, knows her limits, and exercises clear caution in her activities in this area.

I have encouraged her to contact the local mycological associations to receive appropriate certification.

Best
—[local biology PhD]




*****************

My gut is telling me they're trying to pull some kind of "haha told you we can't approve you so you can't do it!" thing, but in lieu of actual programs, if I can get someone to sign off that they believe I have existing knowledge equivalent to that which would be taught in such a course, they might back off. Anybody know a PhD nearby who might be willing to make such an evaluation?

EDIT: I have discovered the ability to put big blocks of text not actually from the forum in a quote just like when I reply to specific posts. I am not sure how I've managed to neglect this option for the past decade and a half, but it's my new best friend. :laugh: Cleaning up my prior posts now!

Edited by asukawashere (12/10/15 02:20 PM)

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Offlineasukawashere
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Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22638798 - 12/10/15 02:17 PM (8 years, 3 months ago)

Meanwhile, I contacted the two closest mycology clubs, COMA (Connecticut-Weschester Mycological Association) and CVMS (Connecticut Valley Mycological Society) hoping they would be able to point me in the direction(s) of members/club allies that might be of some help or knew of any area programs I could get a certification of some sort from.

****************************

I sent an email to COMA leadership and got the following back:

Quote:

Unfortunately I've not heard of any mushroom cert courses. I vaguely remember talk of Maine contemplating foragers selling their finds to pass something, but am not certain. Maybe it was California.

NY Botanical Garden has a couple of classes with Gary Lincoff that are
electives for their field botany cert, but that takes a year+. COMA
holds 'Mushroom University' over 6 weeks in March/April in Somers with
Gary Lincoff. I bet he'd print you out a certificate if asked, but it
doesn't really have any accrediting organization. Ridiculous of the
Health Dept. there to hassle you over this... Anyway, if you want Mush U details, check our website again in a month or so.




****************************

Meanwhile, my facebook post to CVMS's group received some sympathy from another member, until the admin came along and it was deleted and I got the following in a message:

Quote:

Our goal at CVMS is to rectify peoples' "lack of ability to identify things" [that was a reference to a comment in my post about some of the reasons I felt it was important for people to be able to buy mushrooms at farm markets] through hands on education. We are not a certification group or organization for commercial mushroom sellers. If you make $5.00, what you do is for personal financial gain, regardless of your day job. [I'd mentioned my farm stand was effectively a hobby] Feel free to keep up your wordy inquiries with the [town] Health Department, but this forum is not the place for this post.




*******************

…So, "these health guys are being jerks, sorry I don't have more info" vs. "how dare you ever think of selling a wild mushroom you greedy person!?"… guess which mycology club is getting my membership fee and some photo library donations? :grin:

Also, as I said, I'll be the first to admit I'm "wordy," and I'll gladly accept that as legitimate criticism of my professional writing, but am I the only one who thinks that phrasing came across as really snippy and uncalled for?

I said I was sorry if my post was offensive, pointed out that in the area aquarium societies I'm a member of, we value small businesses as a vital part of our hobby (in fact, many aquarium society members also own Mom & Pop pet stores), and I had assumed a similar concept applied to amateur mycologists, but was sorry if I was mistaken. I'm not going to waste time barking up that tree, especially when there's another, apparently more supportive, club for me to join instead.

…but I'm still not above a little public shaming here and there. :wink: No offense intended to any CVMS members who had absolutely nothing to do with this. I'm sure you're wonderful people and I have no doubt many of us could be good 'shroom hunting buddies.

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Invisiblerelic
of a bygone era
Male

Registered: 10/14/14
Posts: 5,623
Loc: the right coast
Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22638823 - 12/10/15 02:24 PM (8 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

asukawashere said:
Quote:

relic said:
understood.  today is your big day wrt to DOAG guy's visit; let us know how it goes!




<snip for brevity>

I'll post his report as soon as I get it.




yeah their supposed approval of the chinese products--often contaminated with lead, cadmium, mercury, and other heavy, toxic metals not to mention bromines, chlorines/ides, etc.--are the wrinkle in this affair that make their issue with you and your endeavors such a travesty.

in summary WRT to their duplicity: fucking ugh.


Quote:

asukawashere said:
The biology PhD sent the following back to them:

<snip>

I have encouraged her to contact the local mycological associations to receive appropriate certification.

Best
—[local biology PhD]"

*****************

My gut is telling me they're trying to pull some kind of "haha told you we can't approve you so you can't do it!" thing, but in lieu of actual programs, if I can get someone to sign off that they believe I have existing knowledge equivalent to that which would be taught in such a course, they might back off. Anybody know a PhD nearby who might be willing to make such an evaluation?




the bit about fiddleheads is even more interesting from the standpoint that i've seen laypeople harvest the fuzzy type that are actually toxic in quantity so they're pretty easy to confuse compared to your oysters and maitake.

there does seem to be some headway in the matter.  perhaps put out the call (for a local sympathetic PhD) to the people in your aquatic biology circles as well?  it seems that anyone who is not you who has enough letters trailing their professional name might suffice?  there are a lot of dumb, superstitious, unhelpful, and misguided people with formal, higher education, but there are a lot of those types who are also helpful as well as being concerned about local harvest, farm-to-market situations, sustainability issues, etc. and i hope you find one soon.

for my part, i'll send a quick email to a friend who is connected at Harvard (i know that's not your 'backyard') to see if she can make any connections for you.  it's doubtful, but easy for me to do and i'm glad to do it.

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Invisiblerelic
of a bygone era
Male

Registered: 10/14/14
Posts: 5,623
Loc: the right coast
Re: Can anybody point me toward any Connecticut foraging regs? (plus a few bonus pretty pics for ogling) [Re: asukawashere]
    #22638861 - 12/10/15 02:33 PM (8 years, 3 months ago)

Quote:

asukawashere said:

Quote:

Our goal at CVMS is to rectify peoples' "lack of ability to identify things" through hands on education. We are not a certification group or organization for commercial mushroom sellers. If you make $5.00, what you do is for personal financial gain, regardless of your day job. Feel free to keep up your wordy inquiries with the [town] Health Department, but this forum is not the place for this post.









you're not mistaken; that was a pretty shitty passive-aggressive way to criticize you, your predicament, and your writing.  lame coming from a group admin and/or club officer.

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