Conference for Food Protection 2012 Issue Form Internal Number: 057 Issue: 2012 I-006 Council Accepted as Accepted as Recommendation: Submitted Amended No Action Delegate Action: Accepted Rejected All information above the line is for conference use only. Title: Report-Wild Harvested Mushroom Committee Issue you would like the Conference to consider: During the 2010 Conference for Food Protection Biennial Meeting in Providence, Rhode Island the Wild Harvested Mushroom committee was created and given the following charges as an outcome of Issue 2010 I-008: The Conference recommends that the Council consider forming a committee to continue discussion of this issue and that the following language and attachments for consideration to be placed on the CFP website as guidance listing steps that states can use to develop and implement a wild harvested mushroom program for their state. The charges will be: (1) Develop guidelines to help regulators address the issue of wild mushrooms in food establishments; (2) Report back at the 2012 CFP; (3) The name of the committee will be Wild Harvested Mushrooms Committee. This Issue presents the Wild Harvested Mushrooms Committee's final report along with committee roster and requests acknowledgement of the attached report. The Wild Harvested Mushrooms Committee worked to complete their charges by developing a model program that regulatory agencies can use when addressing the issue of wild harvested mushrooms in retail and food service establishments. Public Health Significance: Due to public health food safety concerns, regulatory agencies in many jurisdictions follow the lead of the US FDA model Food Code (hereafter model Food Code) in requiring that wild harvested mushrooms sold to the public be identified by "an approved mushroom identification expert" (2009 model Food Code, Section 3-201.16). However, the pathway both for becoming an "approved mushroom identification expert" and having a regulatory agency recognize one are not well established or defined. The model Food Code recommends that all food served to the public must come from safe sources. The model Food Code further stipulates that mushrooms species picked in the wild shall be obtained from sources where each mushroom is individually inspected and found to be safe by an approved mushroom identification expert. However the model Food Code does not establish what constitutes the basis for approval of an identification expert. Due to the lack of established criteria and recognized training courses, some regulatory jurisdictions entirely prohibit the sale of wild harvested mushrooms. Other states have a limited program to allow specific species to be sold. The model program proposed here addresses this "gap" in public health interventions by providing clear guidance for regulatory agencies to use when addressing the issue of wild harvested mushrooms in foodservice establishments. Recommended Solution: The Conference recommends...: acknowledgement of the Wild Harvested Mushrooms Committee's final report and recognize the effort that committee members put forth in completion of the charges issued by the 2010 biennial meeting. Submitter Information: Name: Chris Gordon, Co-Chair Organization: Wild Harvested Mushroom Committee Address: Virginia Department of Health 109 Governor Street5th Floor-Office of Environmental Health Services City/State/Zip: Richmond, VA 23219 Telephone: 804-864-7417 Fax: 804-864-7475 E-mail: [email protected] Attachments: • "Wild Harvested Mushroom Committee List" • "CDC MMWR Wild Mushroom reports 2011" • "Food Safety News-California Wild Mushroom statement" • "New Hampshire statement on wild mushrooms" • "Washington Post article on consumption" • "Wild Harvested Mushroom Committee Final Report" It is the policy of the Conference for Food Protection to not accept Issues that would endorse a brand name or a commercial proprietary process. 2012 Committee Lists for Program Booklet Committee Name: Wild Harvested Mushroom Committee First Name Last Name Company /Employer Name City State Role (Chair, Co‐Chair, Vice Chair) Lisa Roy Maine CDC Health Inspection Program Augusta ME Co-Chair Michaeline Mulvey Maine Task Force to Certify Wild Mushroom Foragers Bowdoin ME Member Robert Brown Whole Foods Market Austin TX Member Terrance Powell Los Angeles County Dept. of Public Health Baldwin Park CA Member Andrew Harris Summit County Health District Stow OH Member Kevin Dreesman Illinois Department of Health Springfield IL Member Christopher Gordon Virginia Department of Health Richmond VA Co-Chair Christine Cox Montana Department of HHS Helena MT Member Richard R. Vergili Culinary Institute of America Hyde Park NY Member Frederick J. Angulo USCDC Chamblee GA Member Thomas L. Schwarz International Flight Services Association Burke VA Member Lisa Whitlock Food & Drug Administration Oakland CA Advisor Katey Kennedy Food & Drug Administration Portland OR Advisor Environmental Health in MMWR --- 1961 -- 2010 Page 1 of 20 Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report ( MMWR ) Environmental Health in MMWR — 1961–2010 Supplements October 7, 2011 / 60(04);86 -96 Henry Falk, MD Consultant to Office of the Director, Office of Noncommunicable Diseases, Injury, and Environmental Health, CDC Corresponding author: Henry Falk, MD, Office of the Director, Office of Noncommunicable Diseases, Injury, and Environmental Health, 4770 Buford Highway, Atlanta, GA 30341; Telephone: 770-488-0608; Fax: 770-488-0702; E-mail: [email protected]. Introduction As an epidemiology bulletin, MMWR has unique strengths and attributes. These include weekly publication (highlighting timeliness and frequency of reporting), rapid turnaround, a close relation with government practitioners of public health (federal, state, and local), and a clear mission of informing the public health community and the general public about new, reemerging, and ongoing threats to the public's health. With its integral relationship to CDC, MMWR also is a means of publishing major internal CDC reports, particularly surveillance reports. The field of environmental health is particularly heterogeneous and diverse. Environmental threats can be categorized singly as particular toxins, chemicals, or risks (e.g., lead, mercury, dioxin, rats, and poisons), grouped by environmental media (e.g., air pollutants, water pollutants, and hazardous wastes), broadly demarcated by environmental place or setting (e.g., homes, communities, and rural environments), or more broadly by national versus global concerns. Similarly, environmental diseases can be categorized as diseases essentially caused by a specific environmental factor (e.g., heat stroke and carbon monoxide [CO] poisoning); diseases caused, triggered, or exacerbated by environmental risk factors (e.g., asthma); or chronic multifactorial diseases for which environmental risk factors are just one category of multiple risk factors (e.g., heart disease or cancer). Beyond disease, natural and human-made disasters (e.g., chemical, biologic, and nuclear/radiation), including terrorist events, are an essential focus of environmental health. Given the attributes of MMWR and the breadth of environmental health, readers might anticipate that MMWR environmental health reports focus heavily on new or reemerging epidemic diseases, disaster situations, chemicals and toxins causing acute clinical illness, newly identified risk factors and threats for acute illness, and surveillance updates for tracking environmental disease. Indeed, such has been the case, particularly in MMWR 's early years; however, in recent years, coverage has broadened. This report provides an overview of MMWR as it related to environmental health during 1961--2010; the presentation of results follows the http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/su6004a14.htm?s_cid=su6004a14_x 12/4/2011 Environmental Health in MMWR --- 1961 -- 2010 Page 2 of 20 outline of the environmental framework (Table 1) and highlights the public health problems addressed in MMWR . Methods MMWR online listings were searched by title for all weekly reports broadly related to environmental health; prior years (1960--1964) were searched manually in the print-edition archives. Environmental concerns such as dietary supplements and other sources of toxic and hazardous exposures were included. Occupational exposures were not included, except in rare instances where both occupational and environmental exposures might be considered part of the same event or exposure. A total of 826 reports were identified and categorized by their main topic for more detailed review (Table 1). Often, multiple ways existed to aggregate particular environmental problems, but the category that seemed most applicable was selected arbitrarily to enable discussion of topics in the sections believed to be most reasonable; for example, childhood lead poisoning from traditional home remedies is discussed with other sources of lead poisoning rather than with dietary supplements because those exposures are integral to understanding the distribution of lead poisoning cases. In contrast, eosinophilia-myalgia syndrome (EMS) is discussed under epidemic illnesses rather than under dietary supplements because EMS cases constituted a major national epidemic of a new disease and is best considered in that context. All reports about a single topic or incident are counted separately. In this report, areas that were prominently featured in MMWR during the period are highlighted to provide a sense of how MMWR covered environmental health during that period.