Unsafe Foraging Practices Lead to Dire Consequences

Photo: organicauthority

The majority of survival, prepping and homesteading sites will advise you to learn to safely forage and even give you tips on doing so. We all tell you to forage with caution or you will pay a physical price. But rarely do we graphically tell you just how serious that price can be. There are really serious consequences if you mistake one plant for another!

My personal rules for eating anything foraged whether by myself or another that I trust are:

• That at least one of the entire plant including some roots is pulled and examined to insure it matches either the known plants characteristics or the reference guide it is being compared to. I also save that pulled plant until a minimum of 48 hours after the meal to insure if someone does have a reaction so that medical professionals can see the actual plant consumed for treating the effected persons. (This is intended for a crisis scenario only… if there are more than one of the plants and if it can be replanted to assist in staying safe near your camp other wise we advise leaving no foot print and taking only what you need!)
• Even when I believe I know what the plant is, I always compare to a guide and prefer to use a guide that also tells us which plants look similar and how to tell them apart.
• Never serve others a plant foraged until I have tried a small (very small) portion in the method in which it will be served myself to insure no ill effects.
• No matter how much you trust the source of your foraged meal, never eat a large portion in one setting without waiting to see how it affects you. Different individuals have varying reactions to the same plant, nut berry or fruit than does another.
• When in doubt go without!

Now that may make it sound like foraging is not worth the effort! But in a crisis scenario, I would then add that plant pulled for comparison to the garden area so that we would not have to search for it again in unfamiliar surroundings. Or wander far from our camp to obtain it.

That may be overcautious to some but if you read the stories below you will understand the consequences of not being cautious enough!

Our first example is the story of 3 culinary students who thought they knew what they were eating

Experience: foraging nearly killed me

The second example tells of an on going issue with Russian foraging which they have been doing for generations but due to the economy now new foragers are learning the ultimate consequence for a mistake.

Russians Dying–Literally–for Favorite Fungi

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