Poisonings from Wild Mushrooms in Mexico Sparks Effort to Grow Safe, Edible Fungi Global Press Journal | |
go to original December 5, 2016 |
Deep in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico natives have been using psilocybin mushrooms, or 'magic mushrooms' for thousands of years not as a drug, but as a medicine to heal both physical and mental disorders. (Reset.me)
Maria Mendez Perez loves to eat mushrooms, but she doesn't buy them from a market or grocery store. Instead, she and her daughters trek to nearby wooded areas to gather them from the forest floor.
"My mother recognized all the mushrooms that grew near our home, and when she'd find any unknown mushroom, she didn't take risks. We wouldn't take it," Mendez Perez, 70, says.
That knowledge is unusual in the Chiapas Highlands area of southern Mexico. People get sick or die every year from eating poisonous mushrooms. In July, three children died after consuming the fungi.
It's a challenge to educate the region's indigenous people about the dangers of eating wild mushrooms, says Gabriel Pablo Narvaez Utrilla. He leads mushroom production programs at the Secretaria para el Desarrollo Sustentable de los Pueblos Indigenas (SEDESPI), the government ministry in charge of conducting policy with and for the state's indigenous people.
In 2005, more than 45 people were poisoned from eating unsafe mushrooms. Since then, SEDESPI has conducted annual campaigns to discourage people from eating wild mushrooms. Prior to that, the ministry focused just on training people to grow and harvest mushrooms-a program that has had more than 8,000 participants since it began in 1996.
Local producers struggle to meet the demand for mushrooms. Until 2014, there were only three mushroom seed suppliers, including SEDESPI's own laboratory, Narvaez Utrilla says.
But this year, the ministry launched another project, this time to boost local seed production, says Juan Mardonio Perez Perez of SEDESPI's agro-industries department.
In past years, most farmers came to SEDESPI for mycelium, the mushroom seed.
"But now we are training so that those same farmers can install small laboratories where they can create their own seed, and not depend on us," he says.
Already, farmers say the program is helping them.
Read the rest at Zimbabwe Star
Related: Meet the Man Dedicating His Life to Uncovering Rare Mushrooms (VICE News)
Related: Psychedelic Mushrooms Help Your Brain (Snopes)
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