US mushroom farms create mushroom substrates and produce specialty mushrooms (shiitake, oyster, lions mane, maitake) over the course of an 6-12 week cycle. These substrates are essentially a root system that grows and fruits a mushroom. About 90-95% of the growing process is in the formation of substrate. Mushroom fruiting only takes 7-10 days, the entire process can be about 100 days.
However, Chinese companies are bringing in fully colonized “ready to fruit” substrates. US companies are then fruiting mushrooms off the substrates within a week.
Our issue: Chinese mushrooms are then labeled as Product of the USA. Furthermore they can be shipped and fruited anywhere in the US with “Product of [State]” seal. A mushroom substrate made 90 days ago in China can be in the US for 7 days and mushrooms labeled “Grown in Texas” when 90% of its life was in China.
This also raises organic certification and other food safety questions. We get audited by a dozen agencies throughout the year. We need to show sterilization records, ingredient sourcing records, cleaning processes, traceability through the entire supply chain, etc. We have staff who only oversee our organic operations. They are all day audits. But if a company is using Chinese substrates, they literally just provide auditors with an organic email from a Chinese business and that is good enough.
It’s crazy to us that US farms are being thoroughly inspected but Chinese imports get a free pass while competing with the same labeling “Product of the USA” and “Organic certified.”
Our audit burden would be much lower if we were to just buy substrates from a Chinese company with 0 accountability. There is no need to prove sterilized inoculation records. Traceability becomes essentially just pointing to a Chinese company for answers in the event of a recall or issue in the substrates.
Both American and Chinese mushrooms are priced the same in US grocery stores. There is the question of where we distribute our spending. 80% of the cost of Chinese mushrooms is in the oceanic freight. When you buy a Chinese mushroom (unknowingly), a bulk of that money goes to a international freightliner company. Where 100% of an American mushroom purchase goes to an American farm.