Banninated in Kansas City...
Posted on 05/18/2005 6:14:52 PM PDT by Drammach
Posted on Wed, May. 18, 2005
A Morel Caught In Red Tape
MIKE HENDRICKS
To remind us why some people call it mindless bureaucracy, here’s a little story about mushrooms.
You’ve heard of morels, right? Joe Bryson and other vendors at City Market have been selling those springtime delicacies for years and no one has ever gotten sick from them — or so say people at the Kansas City Health Department.
Still, this might have been the market’s last mushroom season.
The Health Department has suddenly discovered a rule in the Kansas City Food Code.
“They tell us,” Bryson told me, “that each mushroom has to be inspected by an approved mushroom identification expert.”
A mushroom identification expert?
“No,” Bryson corrected. “An approved mushroom identification expert.”
Well, yes. An approved expert would probably be better than an unapproved one, I suppose. “Anyway,” the Hale, Mo., produce farmer continued, “I thought if I got on the Internet I might be able to find one. And guess what?”
What?
“I don’t think any exist.”
Oh, get out. Our government wouldn’t require consultation from an approved mushroom identification expert if such a bird didn’t exist, right?
Wrong.
From what I can tell, there is no such thing as “an approved mushroom identification expert.”
Here or perhaps anywhere.
Like most jurisdictions, Kansas City follows the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s model food code.
And for at least a decade, the FDA code has required the use of approved mushroom identification experts without specifying what one is.
Or how he gets approved.
“Sometimes a federal agency will define things down to the nth degree,” Laura Phelps of the American Mushroom Institute told me.
And in this case?
“No,” says Phelps.
If there are any states that have set up their own process, I couldn’t find them. Missouri has no approval process for mushroom experts, a spokesman for the state Department of Health and Senior Services told me.
And neither does Kansas.
“There are no standards or means of doing it or anything,” said Skip Kay, president of the Kaw Valley Mycological Society, mycological being a scientific term for mushrooms. “The state government … has no way of identifying such a person.”
This brings us back to Kansas City, where the morel season is about spent.
I asked the official in charge of the food inspection program, Lesly Forsberg, about the crackdown, and she stressed the dangers of certain types of mushrooms.
Even one death would be too many, she said, and I agree. No one wants to die from a bad mushroom.
But as morels aren’t a deadly variety, are easily identified and people love to eat them, couldn’t the Health Department do something to improve the flow of that now forbidden fungi to Kansas Citians’ dinner plates?
For example, locate a mushroom identification expert and get her or him approved pronto?
“No, I’m not aware of the name of any approved mushroom identification experts in the area,” Forsberg said, adding, “It is not our responsibility to find a mushroom identification expert for them.”
No, it is the job of the bureaucracy to enforce the rules — even the ridiculous ones.
To reach Mike Hendricks, call (816) 234-7708 , or write him at mhendricks@kcstar.com.
Banninated in Kansas City...
First they need a competent botanist. A morel is not a mushroom.
I don't eat fungus. So sorry. >_>
Oh but that's good fungus.
Why am I not surprised?
There is a reason for that.
It's called murder.
A doctor (no less) here in Cleveland picked some mushrooms from her backyard, put them in her food, killed her dinner guests, but she lived to tell the tale about her newly transplanted liver.
No lie.
I'll let my tagline do the heavy lifting for me once again.
Government Intelligence not to be use in one sentence. The two words are not compatable. The ability to make rule does not follow thru to the end problems created being a problem.
About????
I think the hard frost we had in early May ended it here in central Illinois. Found plenty before that.
I was in Texas for a week and came back home and didn't find anymore.
Then you have never eaten a Morel - uuuummm!
The absolute best!
Honey. I'm home.
http://nov55.com/mr/pic36ad4.jpg
One more damn'd tax.
I heard the same rumor here in Michigan but I can't see it happening.
You are most eminently correct..
"Major steps in evolution are generally invisible to science, because they occur so rapidly that even the fossil evidence disappears.
To study a major step in evolution as it is occurring is unprecedented in science. The morel produces such a result in a very dramatic way.
It is currently evolving from a yeast to a mushroom.
This means the macro-morphology (large scale structure) of the morel is evolving from scratch.
There is no other known example of macro-morphology originating from a single cell organism in hundreds of millions of years.
Huh? I've never heard that.
Thank you for that informative link.
That is what actually caught my attention about this story, and why I posted it..
Government Bureaucracy at it's best..(worst)
;oP
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