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UNH Biology student Marissa Gast ’21, follows HB 345: establishing a license for mushroom harvesters.
University of New Hampshire students explore the science behind the underlying aspects of current issues under consideration at New Hampshire's State House.
Transcript by Otter.ai
From UNH Cooperative Extension, this is Relative to New Hampshire.
Step into the classroom and listen in while group of UNH students explore the underlying aspects of current issues under consideration at New Hampshire's State House. We pick apart those issues and connect with experts. All to share with you, insights from our scientific community that enhance our understanding of the biological world right here in New Hampshire, home of the greatest democracy in the world.
Anna: I’m your moderator, Dr. Anna Kate Wallingford.
Marissa: I’m Marissa, I'm a senior double major in biology and theater.
Anna: Marissa had been following HB 345: establishing a license for mushroom harvesters and we’ll start with our group discussion before she attended public hearings on this bill. The group is a team of science liaisons made up of UNH students from a diverse array of departments in the College of Life Sciences and Agriculture, as well as my co-moderators Extension’s Public Engagement Program Manager, Nate Bernitz and Extension’s Public Affairs Manager, Lauren Banker.
Marissa: It turns out, they tried to pass an identical bill last year, and it kind of got lost in the cancellations of meetings and the restarting meetings and stuff like that, because of COVID. In that, so it ended up not getting passed, I'm not sure like, there's not really any like notes from that. So I'm not sure if it was just, you know, little potatoes compared to stuff that was going on or, and they just gave up on it, or what happened? But this, the one that they're, they're looking at now is very similar. So it's establishing a license for people that are harvesting and identifying mushrooms for commercial uses. So to sell to other people. You have to go through 20 hours, if you're not already an expert, or at least four hours of training, if you're already an expert. They have it split up into two different kinds of mushrooms. They have tier one, which are mushrooms that have no other species that look similar to them that could be toxic. And then tier two would be like kind of more dangerous ones that could be mistaken for other species that are harmful to humans. They are proposing that would be $75 to be licensed, and then it would last for five years. And then if you wanted to get it renewed, it would be cheaper to renew. But violating the new bill would be a fine, they would establish fines for it. And it just said not to exceed $1,000.
Anna: I have a lot of thoughts on this. I think this is a really interesting topic. But Nate, it sounds like you have a burning question.
Nate: Oh, I mean, I assume this is Department of Agriculture?
Marissa: It said how long you would need to be in training, but it doesn't seem like they've come up with like, who is running the training? Or if it's like everyone does the same training or get on notice that you need to just document that you took the class and like identification. The Department of Health and Human Services, people accidentally getting poisoned kind of thing. So maybe that's why they thought it was under that? I don't know. They're leaving it up to the Department of Health and Human Services to come up with? Like, what the training like it said, it needs to involve like, like pictures, they're going to try and do some kind of I don't I'm not sure. So I don't know if that means that they're the ones coming up with it? Or if it's Yeah, I don't know who's coming up with this training?
Anna: Well, I think a good way to treat this.., well the kind of questions that you have: who is going to oversee this license? Who's going to decide what kind of knowledge you need in order to get this license? Who's going to oversee the maintenance of the license? Who's going to oversee the continuing ed, for this license?
Let's think about this a little bit, because we can go in a couple of different avenues, we could ask. We could kind of say like, what other things are regulated? So like, pesticide use is regulated, we could think about how do they go about licensing pesticide applicators, who regulates food safety and think about who to talk to you about that? I have a couple ideas. Mushrooms aside, like how does it work to be a regulated person? Especially when it comes to knowledge like this, and then and then maybe think about who could provide the expertise when it comes to the mushrooms?
Marissa: I just sat in on the hearing for HB 345, which was it was a pretty fast meeting. I had looked into this bill before and saw that it was proposed last year under a different name, but basically this same wording. He kind of explained the history of it. They had the 2019 Mushroom Foraging Commission, they were the ones that kind of came up with the idea of starting the registration. Well, it's a license for foraging wild mushrooms. Right now, there's already a federal food code. So the 2017 US Food Code, which was then adopted by the state of New Hampshire in 2019. It actually makes it illegal to sell wild mushrooms right now [without a licensing program]. But it's kind of like a weird gray area, like they had someone that was testifying that was concerned about the legal status because he didn't know or he didn't think that it was actually like illegal in the state. And so it's like, kind of this fuzzy area of like, is it illegal federally, but not in the state because we don't have a commission. So there's no one keeping track of whether people are licensed and stuff like that. So last year, it was “ought to pass” with an amendment, but then it died because of COVID. So they weren't able to like complete the vote and like go through everything, which is kind of what I had thought happened.
Anna: Marissa filled us in on the findings of the commission she mentioned, comments from members of the Northeastern Mycological Society, and a few comments from mushroom sellers, that they needed this program in order to ensure their market, that they would be more reputable with this program, but they also wanted to the regulations to be reasonable and not a barrier to their economic success. Spoiler alert, this bill was passed into law in this session, with an amendment.
Marissa: Part of the amendment that was proposed last year, which it was supposed to pass with the amendment, was to exclude chaga from the bill. Chaga is not the fruiting body of mushrooms, it’s the mycelium. People use it for different medicinal stuff. But they didn't feel like it should be under this specific bill because, in this bill, they decided in the amendment to define mushroom as the fruiting body. There's also some ecological effects. What did he say?... something like it's not like collecting like acorns off the, you know, forest floor, it's a more permanent part of fungus.
Anna: I’m glad that you went to this meeting and heard this, which is the conservation side of things. So overharvesting. I know this is a problem in Appalachian regions in the southeast with ramps, where ramps had become like this really, really popular green. It's like, almost like garlic. It's like wild garlic. Something that backwoods people enjoyed to themselves. And then it became like this hip culinary thing and people started going out and harvesting it and it became a huge, huge problem for wild ramp populations. I didn't even realize that like Chaga coffee is actually mycelial growth. Is that right?
Marissa: Yeah. He was saying that its for health things. One of the big things that’s in it is methyl salicylates? Yeah, I think it was salicylic acid, which I believe is like is in aspirin?
Anna: Yup. So does everyone understand the difference between a mushroom fruiting body and mushroom mycelial growth?
Marissa: Mycelium is the part - it's actually a lot of times a lot bigger than the like mushroom itself - it's the part that's attached to whatever the substrate is, usually it's like rotting wood. But it's the vegetative part of the fungus.
Anna: Yeah, mycelial growth. It looks like roots, right? You could confuse it with roots, but the better analogy is like - if you're comparing it to maybe apples - most of the growth is the tree and the apple is the fruit. Where that mushroom fruiting body is a fruiting body and it's part of their sexual reproduction.
Anna: So it sounds like – while the state has some details to work out in terms of what training opportunities will count towards a license – we now have a mechanisms for foragers to sell wild mushrooms in our state and consumers should be a little more confident when purchasing and consuming wild foraged mushrooms that arrive in their CSA boxes or that they buy at farmer’s markets. But there are a ton, and I mean a TON, of regulations regarding farmed produce and we thought it would be nice to talk to some experts about what we should know about produce safety in the state. We spoke with Mary Saucier Choate and Heather Bryant about their roles in Extension, helping producers and farmers with all things food safety.
Mary: My name is Mary Saucier Choate. I work with restaurants, I work with farmers, and entrepreneurs, with businesses, helping them with food safety. Also farmers who are getting into value added processing. So it's very exciting all over the state.
Heather: I'm based in the same office that Mary is in, Grafton County Cooperative Extension. I'm a fruit and vegetable specialist. So how did I get into food safety? That was a little bit of a of an accident. This new regulation came out several years ago called the Food Safety Modernization Act. We needed somebody to read it so that we could explain it to farmers because it's a really complicated piece of legalese. I volunteered to read it, thinking it would be like a three month gig. I would explain what it says to the farmers and then be back to my fruit and vegetable world. And that was like, I don't know 2013 or 2014? So here I still am. I've learned a lot about food safety over time. But I'm in it primarily because I understand the production side of the equation for the vegetable farms. One of the questions is okay, we know there's all this food safety science, how do we then make it practical for the farms? So that's, that's where I fit in.
Anna: Here’s a good question for you, Mary. When we're talking about food safety, we're basically talking about like things that can make us sick that live on our food? Or does that also translate to like, the food itself being poisonous? The original question was like, we're talking about wild mushrooms and the dangers of the inherent mushroom, but there are rules in place to protect us from like regular old mushrooms and everything we eat. So what do you mean by food safety?
Mary: Yeah, so food safety covers anything in food, or on food, that could make you sick. So it definitely covers toxic mushrooms, and regular mushrooms that get contaminated somewhere along the way. This happened actually last year, a couple of times with enoki mushrooms. It also covers a food allergens fall into food safety. If food allergens are not labeled correctly, that's a food safety problem, or if they're present and not labeled at all. That's a problem. So we work with folks to help them to not cross contaminate.
Anna: Mary went on to explain that the list of common allergens is growing. There are currently 9 ingredients that must be included in the label as major food allergens Those are milk, eggs, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, soybeans, fin-fish, shellfish, and the new kid on the block, sesame. She also mentioned that there are new mechanisms in place that will likely mean there will be more added to that list in the future. But we don’t think about how likely fresh fruits and vegetables are to be carrying pathogens that might make us sick. I asked Heather to give us a sense of what preceded the rules laid out in the federal Food Safety Modernization Act, which we refer to by its acronym, FMSA. What were farmers responsible for when it came to keeping people from getting sick?
Heather: Prior to FSMA coming out, really the only rule was that you can't sell adulterated food. So if you were to sell something that would give somebody Listeria, and they could prove it came from your farm, you could be held legally liable. By that I mean, fines, getting sued in court, for all the money that your farm is worth, and even jail time, if it were proved that you should have known better. FSMA came along, basically, because they were feeling like there was more and more food safety outbreaks happening. And possibly because we're eating more and more fresh fruits and vegetables. Basically the FDA was asked by the federal government to create one set of rules that would be preventative in nature. So if you help farms implement these rules, there's a far less likely chance that a food safety outbreak is going to happen because of something that came off of your farm.
Marissa: I'm wondering also - I don’t know if you know the answer to this - what happens if a restaurant wants to buy mushrooms that are from out of state? If that state doesn't have their own license yet?
Heather: I think the rule says that you can buy it from out of state entities if they have a license. So my guess is if they wanted to buy something from say Virginia and Virginia didn't have a program, they wouldn't be able to do it.
Anna: But at the same time, because of FSMA, at the very least everyone would have to have their address associated with that product. So if there was a problem, you could like it back to that? Is that kind of what the FSMA rules imply?
Heather: Potentially not because the FSMA produce safety rules apply to growing the stuff. And if you're wild harvesting, you're not growing it. I remember Farm Bureau had posted a bunch of conversations about this while it was still in its infancy, and that was one of the big topics. Does the FSMA Produce Safety rule apply to the wild harvesters? When all the analysis was done, it doesn't look like it.
Mary: Like fiddleheads, harvesting fiddlehead ferns and ramps?
Anna: So we did get into the weeds about the current state of affairs when it comes to food safety regulations. Who needs to follow what rules and what is coming in terms of tracking produce from field to fork, as it were. There is a little interplay between federal and state regulations, what the state is responsible for carrying out, and what is a reasonable amount of risk for the consumer.
We kept coming back to the idea that the consumer would naturally be aware that there is obviously more risk when it comes to eating wild mushrooms compared to cultivated mushrooms. I couldn’t help but draw on the risks associated with raw milk. I also wanted to take the opportunity to ask Mary about the potential risks and benefits here in NH, as local producers are legally allowed to sell up to 20 gallons of raw milk daily, directly from their farm. Marissa also had some questions about a bill being considered that would allow for an expansion in the kinds of products made with raw milk that NH farmers can legally sell.
Mary: Raw dairy products cause over 50% of the milk borne outbreaks. Raw milk consumers are 1% of the population, but they get you know, 50% of the foodborne illness of milk drinkers. That's just something that I think people should know. I am 100% for freedom. As far as I'm concerned, you can put whatever you want in your body. And you should have all the information. You shouldn't be fooled by by bad information, to think that something is good or safe.
The reason we pasteurized milk in the first place was because of the foodborne illness problem of raw milk, in the old days when they didn't have pasteurization, when everyone drank raw milk. So brucellosis is gone, pretty much, in our country because of milk pasteurization. I'm reading what the beliefs are, which are not substantiated by science, that it's better for you and it has these enzymes in it that are better for you. You should know that this is based on anecdotal evidence, that they haven't done studies that show that the enzymes in raw milk are super active and protective of health. Some of the vitamins that are decreased when you pasteurize something, when you boil anything, like vitamin C. Milk is not where we look for where we get our vitamin C, right? We looked for vitamin C in things like potatoes, tomatoes and oranges.
Anna: So it sounds like the benefits are kind of unclear. However its an important thing in terms of, you know, it’s your right as a resident of NH, that if you would like to purchase raw milk from your neighbor, from a small scale farm, that’s your right to do so. A previous bill said, you can buy raw milk. This bill is adding ice cream to that list of products that can be sold. We were wondering what happens when you make ice cream? Like, obviously, if its cooked product, its no longer raw, but if you’re not making a custard before freezing it, what is your thinking on the processing part of that? What effect does that have on the potential good bacteria and the really, really dangerous bacteria?
Mary: Should I look that up? How do you make ice cream? If they’re never cooking anything then they’re never killing anything. It would maybe be beneficial if it was kept cold, which would slow down bacterial growth, if there’s any in there?
Anna: What are the things we’re most worried about in raw milk.
Mary: Even if someone’s doing everything right at the dairy, at the milking parlor, bacteria can end up in the milk and there’s no kill step and its going to grow. I know some of the arguments are that the good enzymes are going to stop the bad pathogens and that’s not true. Those pathogens are going to grow whether its raw or pasteurized milk.
Marissa: One of the pathogens they brought up during the hearing was bovine tuberculosis.
Mary: Yes, and Brucellosis. These are things we don’t have in this country very much because we don’t have very much raw milk. They were big problems before pasteurization.
Anna: Could you talk a little bit about Brucellosis, like how sick can that make you versus other things that might just five you a tummy ache or something?
Mary: The thing that concerns me the most is that it can cause abortions, you know, in pregnant women. So that's a problem. Otherwise, just your normal fever and vomiting, nausea, diarrhea.
Anna: What would happen if you froze that milk? Would it have any impact on the on the microbes that we're talking about?
Mary: No, freezing stops bacteria from growing – at least for most bacteria – but it doesn’t kill them. Cooking, pasteurization, heating kills bacteria.
Anna: So if you have something that was already contaminated, and it was made into ice cream, as long as it was made into ice cream really early, before anything got to grow, maybe that would slow down the process of, you know, something dangerous, but it's not going to get rid of it?
Mary: Right. And its really too bad because you can even test a tank full of raw milk, and it'll test fine. But there could still be bacteria in there, if you didn't test the part of the tank that had the bacteria growing. Or it could be a small amount that's not detected. But by the time people are drinking it, it's there. But still, of course, people should be allowed to do whatever they want, just with really good information.
Anna: Mary agreed that the local aspect is beneficial because the least amount of time between milking and consumption is ideal. We had a much longer, and pretty gory, conversations about the multitude of ways food can kill us and how to mitigate risk. So I had everyone weigh in on their responses to this conversation
Emily: I kind of always figured there were extensive rules about this, especially with dairy products, but I never knew like what they were and nor the process of establishing them. So it's kind of reassuring that there's so many regulations in place. So I don't have to worry about any sort of like drinking bacteria when I consume milk. So kind of reassuring, from my end.
Ella: I feel like it made me a little bit more nervous, honestly, because I hadn't really thought about it before. And now it's like, oh, there are regulations, which kind of insinuates that there is a chance, even so of something toxic, or bacteria, or something that could infect me would be in my food, just you know, shopping at the grocery store at the farmers market. So I was as someone that didn't really think about it much before I feel like now I'm a little bit more nervous about that.
Max: I'm just so shocked that there's no traceability laws already in place. I can't believe that that doesn't exist. And that's up for debate right now. I'm kind of interested. So what would happen if there was like a contaminated batch milk, you can't find the source right now?
Mary: Well, generally, it's like one step forward. And one step back, people will be able to say that, but depending on how widely it's distributed, it can be hard to trace. And they're trying to make it really easy to find where food originated. To find the source of the contamination. In my visits to farms and processors, in the classes that we've taught, most farmers by far are interested in doing a great job and not, and not making people sick.
Anna: I’ll leave the final word to Heather, who provided some context.
Heather: I get where you're coming from. Like the more you worried about this stuff, the more you look suspiciously at your salad and think maybe I don't want to eat that. You know, the more I learn about this stuff, the more creeped out I get too. I also for a number of years, before coming to extension, lived in a developing country where there was no refrigeration, and no clean water and people didn't use outhouses. There were lots of foodborne illnesses, and I got many of them and I'm still alive.
One of the things that I learned is that a multitude of sins can be created or corrected in the kitchen. We all have way more power in this equation than we think we do. Are we washing what needs to be washed? Are we refrigerating what needs to be refrigerated? Do we pay attention to whether our refrigerator is at the temperature that's supposed to be? Do we cook our food when it's something that we're going to cook? Or do we kind of cook it halfway and leave it half raw I mean, we have a lot of power. If you if you read the science and you really dive deep, you're going think oh my god, we're all going to die. A lot of us don't. And so, you know, it's not as bad as it feels sometimes.
Anna: There’s a good question for you, Heather. What would your friends from Africa think about a raw diet?
Heather: So I was in Madagascar and, every African country is different but NO, my Malagasy friends would not eat a raw diet. Not only would they not eat a raw diet, they wouldn’t even eat a raw dish. They would cook the life out of everything. They boil everything. Everything. There’s hardly any food items that they eat that aren’t boiled for a really long time.
Anna: Thanks to Mary and Heather, as well as a special thanks to UNH’s Christopher Neefus who answered some mycological questions for Marissa. Thanks to you for listening!
Relative to New Hampshire is a production of UNH Cooperative Extension, an equal opportunity educator and employer. All music is used by permission or by creative commons licensing. UNH Cooperative Extension is a non-partisan organization, the views and opinions expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of the university, its trustees, or its volunteers. Inclusion or exclusion of commercial enterprises in this podcast does not equate endorsement. The University of New Hampshire, New Hampshire Counties, and the US Department of Agriculture cooperative to provide Extension programming in the Granite State. This podcast was made possible by the UNH Extension Internship program - if you’re interested in supporting great work like this for the future, learn more at www.extension.unh.edu/internships.