Word: fungi
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...tale wended its way through this hamlet, so disconnected from modern China that Cultural Revolution slogans from three decades ago are still inscribed on the village's mud-brick walls: foreigners, for some mysterious reason, were willing to pay exorbitant prices for what the locals dismissively call "pig snout" fungi. "When we first asked the people in the countryside whether they had any truffles, they were shocked we wanted to buy them," recalls Wu Jianming, chairman of Kunming Rare Truffle Co., the province's largest truffle exporter. "An hour later, they brought us a whole bagful and still couldn...
Kunming Rare Truffle Co.'s Wu cheerfully admits that some of his clients mix his fungi with European ones. But the former metallurgist is astounded less by the chicanery than by the prices his truffles can command abroad. What Wu sells to wholesalers for $80 per kg can be resold to Westerners for 30 times that, or more than double the average yearly income in China. "Who would pay that much for a mushroom?" Wu marvels. "Is it because they think it's an aphrodisiac?" (Since medieval times, many have believed just that.) Nevertheless, Wu maintains a modicum of pride...
...tell that to Guy Cubaynes, a truffle harvester from the southern French town of Lalbenque, who is taking his 250-kg pig Kiki out for a truffle hunt. Cubaynes' family has been gathering truffles since the 1850s, searching for the fungi in the shade of oak trees. He says dealers in Chinese truffles have even infiltrated the center of French-truffle production. Every week, Cubaynes claims, these merchants show up at the market in Lalbenque with the same number of truffles in their baskets, a suspicious constancy. "It's cheating the consumer," says Cubaynes, "and it's also cheating...
...tell that to Guy Cubaynes, a truffle harvester from the southern French town of Lalbenque, who is taking his 250-kg pig named Kiki for her first truffle hunt of the season. Cubaynes' family has been gathering truffles since the 1850s, searching for the fungi under the shade of oak trees. He says dealers in Chinese truffles have even infiltrated the center of French truffle production. Every week, Cubaynes claims, these merchants show up at the market in Lalbenque with the same number of truffles in their baskets, a suspicious constancy that normal truffle collecting does not tend to provide...
...France is now counting on modern science to catch the truffle imposters. The National Institute of Agricultural Research (INRA) has developed a DNA analysis to distinguish French fungi from the Chinese ones without a taste test. Although French regulations call for a truffle's origins to be clearly marked, truffle experts say many vendors either ignore the rules or engage in outright mislabeling. France's fraud-control directorate now carries out random DNA testing to flush out bogus-truffle dealers. Anyone caught intending to deceive the consumer with a Chinese truffle may be fined $1,300. Still, there...