Iowa Grocery Industry Association

Due to a change in the Iowa Administrative Code, effective April 1, 2010, “food service establishments can serve or sell morel mushrooms [only] if procured from an individual who has completed a morel mushroom expert identification course.” Since 2008, only individuals who were certified mushroom experts could sell or serve morel mushrooms. This change allows any Iowan to complete a short, inexpensive course and sell or serve morel mushrooms to food establishments.

With the new change in law, Iowa State University is offering two, three-hour certification training workshops on identifying morel mushrooms (tasty) and false morels (similar looking, but somewhat to quite poisonous). The workshop, which is necessary to sell morel mushrooms in retail stores, will be conducted by Dr. Mark Gleason of the ISU Department of Plant Pathology

There are two workshops are scheduled for Monday, May 3, and Wednesday, May 5. Monday’s course will be held at Flamingo Restaurant in Cedar Rapids from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday’s class will run from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at Bessey Hall (room 205) on the Iowa State campus.

The fee for attending the course is $45 per person, and it is payable at the time of training. No pre-registration is required, but interested parties should contact Gleason at least one day before the training to allow for appropriate planning.

For more information, contact Dr. Mark Gleason at 515-294-0579 or mgleason@iastate.edu.

Reason Behind Workshops:

State law was clarified by emergency administrative rules on April 1, 2010. It is now required that anyone selling morels be certified as having received at least three hours of training in distinguishing morels (tasty) from false morels (similar looking, but somewhat to quite poisonous).

Reason Workshops are Being Held on Short Notice:

The workshops were originally planned for earlier this month, before morel hunting season got underway. However, the organizer of those workshops, Dr. Sam Beattie of the ISU Food Science and Human Nutrition Department, was unable to procure mushrooms from Oregon to use in the training. Consequently, the sessions were not held. Beattie has now taken a job outside of Iowa State University and passed the workshop baton to Dr. Mark Gleason late in April. It is now morel season, so the certification training cannot wait.