RESUMO
The compliance to European and National safety and labelling requirements relating to the sale of spontaneous and cultivated mushrooms and mushroom-based products in Tuscany was assessed. The evidence was collected by the Mycological Inspectorate of North-West Tuscany Local Health Authority during 90 inspections (from 2016 to 2020) at large-scale distribution stores, wholesalers, and restaurants in 10 cities belonging to 3 provinces, and on the labelling analysis of 98 commercial products collected at retail in 2021. Despite a substantial compliance of the inspected activities and products with the regulatory requirements, critical issues were highlighted: 1) EU legislative gap in the definition of specific measures for the safe sale of spontaneous mushrooms; 2) improper shelf storage temperatures of fresh-cut products; 3) incorrect condition of use on the labels of pre-packaged products; 4) lack of countryof- origin declaration in pre-packaged products. Furthermore, the labelling analysis highlighted that 18.4% and 15.3% of the products presented issues in the validity and correctness of the scientific names respect to national requirements in. A revision of the current EU legislation is needed to guarantee consumers safety, also considering the relevant number of poisoning cases related to false mycetisms (ingestion of edible mushrooms unproperly stored or used). Also, a specific revision and harmonization of the EU labelling of mushrooms would be desirable to protect consumers.
RESUMO
This study aims at building an ITS gene dataset to support the Italian Health Service in mushroom identification. The target species were selected among those mostly involved in regional (Tuscany) poisoning cases. For each target species, all the ITS sequences already deposited in GenBank and BOLD databases were retrieved and accurately assessed for quality and reliability by a systematic filtering process. Wild specimens of target species were also collected to produce reference ITS sequences. These were used partly to set up and partly to validate the dataset by BLAST analysis. Overall, 7270 sequences were found in the two databases. After filtering, 1293 sequences (17.8%) were discarded, with a final retrieval of 5977 sequences. Ninety-seven ITS reference sequences were obtained from 76 collected mushroom specimens: 15 of them, obtained from 10 species with no sequences available after the filtering, were used to build the dataset, with a final taxonomic coverage of 96.7%. The other 82 sequences (66 species) were used for the dataset validation. In most of the cases (n = 71; 86.6%) they matched with identity values ≥ 97-100% with the corresponding species. The dataset was able to identify the species involved in regional poisoning incidents. As some of these species are also involved in poisonings at the national level, the dataset may be used for supporting the National Health Service throughout the Italian territory. Moreover, it can support the official control activities aimed at detecting frauds in commercial mushroom-based products and safeguarding consumers.
