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Canberrans in hospital after allegedly buying death cap mushrooms from Woolworths

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Three people are in a stable condition in Calvary Hospital with possible Death Cap mushroom poisoning which they claim was from mushrooms purchased at Dickson Woolworths.

The three claim the source of the poisoning was from mushrooms purchased at the Dickson Woolworths store around April 17.

ACT Health has refused to name the victims, or give any indication as to their age or gender, but have confirmed that all three live in the same household.

Woolworths has confirmed they are working with ACT Health on the matter, but has said it is not aware of any other incidents involving similar symptoms in that time.

ACT Health has advised people displaying symptoms of stomach aches, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea and who purchased and ate mushrooms from Woolworths in Dickson on or around the same date to seek immediate medical attention.

MORE TO COME

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/act-news/canberrans-in-hospital-after-allegedly-buying-death-cap-mushrooms-from-woolworths-20140426-37atq.html

this is pretty serious if true. is it likely someone put them there as i would have thought all woolworths mushrooms would be farmed produce?.

Edited by bot6
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Im guessing the three picked wild shrooms and blamed Woolworths.

Either that or it was a deliberate act by someone in the production chain.

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Or even more likely they got slightly sick from something else, and naturally thought to blame the mushrooms first.

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Articles I've read tonight about this incident have me ranting on twitter.

Like, There are three things fundamentally wrong with how health authorities deal with this:

1. Suggesting that people only buy from supermarkets denies the fact that some edible mushrooms only grow in symbiotic relationships, and that these fungi are usually not cultivated and thus are only picked from the wild. These fungi are SOUGHT AFTER.

2. The recommendation that people only buy from supermarkets ignores that its possible the supply from the supermarket contained deadly fungi. Like, suggesting people go to them after this is idiotic (if its the case).

3. Communities would benefit FAR MORE and more lives would be saved if there was education about the difference between the two fungi (Volvariella volvacea and Amanita phalloides) and their preferred habitats, than this suggestion of abstention.

Fuck people in authority make me wild, those fucking pea-brained idiots!

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But has it been proven somewhere else that they were in fact poisoned by amatoxins? Sounds to me like they went to the hospital with a tummy ache and said 'must be the mushrooms', even tough it makes absolutely no sense that A. phalloides would make it's way into the supermarket, other than someone deliberately trying to murder random people..

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I just heard about his and just know someone has fucked up somewhere. My thoughts are on the poisoned. Are from the same house? Hmmm. There will be more reported on this and I look forward to hearing how it coming out.

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Is it illegal to grow/harvest death caps?

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Weirdly enough when I was 10 years old I would have been able to id a blue ringed octopus or a red back spider through the pictures n excursions I was shown n taken on whilst at school but only found out about how to id a death cap mushroom from a friend when I was in my early twenties,

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hm, my parents used to pick the button mushrooms that would come up in their front yard. one of the first things my dad taught me was how to tell the death caps .

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Pretty sure dethcaps grow symbiotic with a tree, so i really doubt theyd be cultivated at all. Especially by accident

Edited by El presidente Hillbillios
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...thats a fckn horrible thought that there was even the slightest possibility they were just slipped in

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Perhaps someone will "come out" at some point and try to extort Woolies claiming to have planted the death cap. Food items have been deliberately contaminated in the past as an act of extortion.

Who knows? Terrible event either way. I'm sure there'll be more to this story at some point soon...

When I used to go hunting for Amanita Muscaria (to take photos of - really, they're stunning!) it always sent a little shiver down my spine to spot a death cap with its faint yellow/green hue, just sitting there. It's like walking on a trail in summer and seeing a large Tiger snake on the path slowly move off into the grass. Both of those things are not scary exactly, but it does make me reflect on how we co-exist peacefully the vast majority of the time with fatal plants/fungi/animals all around us.

Quick story: one time I nearly shit myself rather than stopping to reflect and stroke my beard when I was positively racing on my mountain bike on a sandy walking trail dodging sticks. Yeah... one of the sticks I dodged was a very long Tiger snake which didn't have the time to move its way off the path before I raced almost on top of the thing. And that, my friends, is why I can never again ride my bike while tripping. Every stick is a fucking Tiger snake.

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you know, just watching some of these abc news stories, they have a long spiel about the dangers of eating death caps, symptoms of toxicity, show photos of the mushrooms, say that "it's common to mistake field mushrooms for death caps"

but no identification

why not? no run down of features of agaricus vs amanitas, nothing about gills cap colour or anything. is it a legal thing? as in are they liable if someone says they saw how to identify from an abc news story but still got sick, can they sue the abc?

or are they just clueless?

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Nah, it's simply that they couldn't spread enough fear and mycophobia if they actually educated people and shown them the many very obvious differences between deadly Amanitas and edible mushrooms. The media thrive on fear, people don't watch the news to get educated, they watch them to justify their anger and bitterness by watching anger and fear inducing reports.

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are you not in australia? abc (australian broadcasting corporation) is our national broadcaster and generally has a reputation for being one of the more rational news outlets in our country. although they are accused of bias by both the "left" and the "right", i still think they're the closest thing to an actual news agency in australia.

edit: that is to say i have seen before brief identification from some print news outlets, when they run the obligatory "watch out for death this winter" story.....

Edited by bot6

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Working within the distribution chain of said company everything I've read about it stinks to high heaven! Knowing how we recieve, pick and distribute produce there's no way only one store would put out a recall on a suspect product unless they had a unique supplier for just that store, in all likelyhood that would not be the case for something like mushrooms. It comes in by the pallet load and gets picked for store delivery in a random fashion, there's no telling what store gets what box of stock or from what pallet/batch. If one delivery ends up suspect then every store that got deliveries of that product on that day would have to quarantine/recall their stock.

My bet goes to some muppet picking, cooking and eating suspect mushrooms that they were not sure about and then trying to pass the buck onto one of the bigger chains.

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^ That's where my moneys gone , some half blind , half witted fool has given them a paper bag full of field mushrooms from a lovely walk amongst the oak trees

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It was last weeks theme on home and away. I reckon some news reporter just plagerized home and away for a quick story.

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http://mobile.abc.net.au/news/2014-04-29/death-cap-mushroom-poisoning3a-fourth-case-declared/5419458

& another case! More info tomorrow supposedly. Not sure how to link it...

What's with canberrians & mushrooms?

Maybe myco identification needs to be a school topic, a prerequisite for housing in the ACT or just chop down all the oak trees;)

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Authorities say the mushrooms at the centre of the three poisoning cases reported at the weekend were picked and there was no link to Woolworths, as claimed by the victims.

shocking! :bootyshake:

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http://canberratimes.com.au/act-news/high-numbers-of-death-cap-mushrooms-around-canberra-20140429-37fiv.html

The poisoning has prompted the ACT government to issue new warnings about the mushrooms, urging the public to be vigilant, especially if they see another member of the public picking wild mushrooms.

I found the last part of this article from the Canberra Times particularly irritating. Every busybody in Canberra has been put on notice to interfere this season.

Edited by GHBeer
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I am hoping the collection of Death caps is not Inadvertently giving the spores a wider dispersal.....

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