Truffle hunting, which mainly takes place in the gray zone and often ends in conflicts due to the high price of this mushroom, has finally been given the opportunity to be legalized. With the aim of putting the job into legal channels, an exam was held for the first time in Serbia last week, during which 84 commercial truffle collectors received certificates.
Zoran Jelenkovic, the president of the Mycological-Mushroom Association, pointed out that there have been many problems in recent years – more and more appropriation of the terrain with truffles, drilling of tires, poisoning of dogs and finally murder in the vicinity of Sremska Mitrovica.
He states that people who want to work legally gathered in the company of truffle growers and that they collected all the information from them about how and where the gray zone of truffles moves and about prices.
He adds that they concluded that these truffles are only 20 percent of the price reached in Italy, and that the complete quantity that is taken out in the gray zone went through Croatia and was sold mainly in Italy and France as Istrian truffles.
– Istria made a mistake and destroyed truffles by improper use of habitats and they no longer have them, and the demand is great. In recent years, it is a Serbian truffle that ends up as Istrian, Jelenkovic pointed out.
He stated that there is a scientific commission in the Association and that with their professional help they organized lectures, testing and with the help of the City of Sremska Mitrovica they got the first certified mushrooms, whose real name is “commercial truffle collectors”.
Great interest in taking the test
The vice-president of the Mycological-Mushroom Association, Marko Blagojevic, said that 84 collectors received the certificate and that the interest in taking the test is very high.
– The Institute for Nature Protection has prescribed quotas for, primarily protected, which may be commercially exploited in a certain amount. As for truffles, I don’t know if there is control of such a situation on the ground, but that is something we point out and aim at, and I hope that we will solve it in the next period, Blagojevic stated.
Jelenkovic announced that new tests will be organized on June 13th in Petrovac on Mlavi, on Kopaonik on the first weekend in September and on Fruska gora on the last weekend in October.
Passability of fungi legally on the market
Jelenkovic pointed out that certified truffle collectors must be provided with an exit from the gray zone, as well as the passage of their goods legally to the markets of Greece, France and Italy.
– We have signed agreements on cooperation with Greece, Croatia, Italy, Slovenia and we invited them to Cuprija to one of our events, where we will agree on the method of communication, what is enough of the paperwork and try to make with our Chamber of Commerce the truffle exchange, and later the mushroom, Jelenkovic explained.
That way, they will be able to know at any moment where a cent of truffles is and how they can sell them. Jelenkovic says that this is the first part, to strengthen the collectors in order to get out of the gray zone. He adds that they talked with Sremska Mitrovica about starting production.
– Everyone who buys mushrooms makes triage, and then ends up unnecessarily in the out-of-class category, at low prices. It was processed, and then sold expensively in Europe, said Jelenkovic, BiF reports.
