Coleotteri Elateridi e Geotrupidi in funghi commercializzati

Contamination of commercialized mushrooms by wireworms and geotrupid beetles. Dried or otherwise preserved mushrooms, as well as other foodstuffs, risk being infested during the post-harvest period by stored-product arthropods. In wild mushrooms (such as the edible Boletus found in woodland) and in the food containing these mushrooms prepared in the food industry, there is also a rather high risk that some field pests - from a large range of insects and other arthropods which infest the carpophores in the forest - remain in the final product. A low level of impurities coming from pests - including the very common tiny larval exuviae of fungus gnats (Diptera Micetophiloidea) - is almost unavoidable and tolerated by the health standards fixed for this foodstuff in some countries (United States), but is not allowed by Italian law. Nevertheless, sometimes insufficient attention to problems deriving from field pests in mushrooms unfortunately causes some really macroscopic contaminants to escape the selection and cleaning process in the food industry, and these are then found in the final product ready for consumption. In the present note, some aspects of this topic are examined, with reference to the case of certain large beetles (elaterid larvae, geotrupid adults) or fragments of them, found by consumers. Original observations are reported and criteria for prevention are outlined.