More on the subject of fiddleheads
To the editor:
Last week Robert Beaulieu of Mapleton wrote in concerned about undue regulatory burdens and training requirements for fiddlehead pickers, possibly contributing to over harvesting. As one of the people involved in providing the trainings, I wanted to write in and clarify the purpose and the content of those sessions.
Fiddleheads are a spring delicacy, and have always been harvested by people who know the land and where to find them. They are a heritage food, and their harvest is part of our working heritage as well. Fiddleheads are picked and sold all over the eastern seaboard, from North Carolina into Canada, and they are also mostly outside the oversight of any kind of regulation.
Troy Haines partnered with my sister Marada and I, and our business Northern Girl, LLC to present pre-season training in sustainable harvesting guidelines, basic food handling guidelines, and the special food safety considerations of fiddleheads. Those guidelines were developed working with pickers themselves, and using all the resources available to us. We used research from the food scientists at the University of Maine, talked to scientists in other states where people have gotten sick from eating fiddleheads, and used our experiences with FDA regulations and best practices required for other foods that are regulated by the government.
When you work in a food business, you’re always trying to protect the vulnerable — the young, the elderly, the immuno-compromised. We want to keep people safe, including the people who have never had a fiddlehead before and don’t know how to cook them properly. We don’t get to use the common sense we all have when we live here because that risk is in our hands. We have to go above and beyond because their safety is our responsibility.
We want to bring a product to a wider market that is safe, clean, and strongly brands it as an Aroostook fiddlehead, coming from a place that is unique, in a quality that’s better than anything else, and picked by people who are stewarding the stands for the long term future. It’s extremely important to us that the stands don’t get overpicked just because we have a market we’re developing.
Northern Girl and Troy Haines are choosing to make these harvesting guidelines a requirement for the folks selling fiddleheads to us because we are ultimately responsible for the food safety and the environmental sustainability of the products that will go all over New England and into New York.
The issue of landowner permits is outside of my expertise, but land access and stewardship is a complex and important issue.
As far as Troy and our efforts, we are simply continuing to buy from independent pickers while trying to share the best knowledge and practices available to us from all our perspectives — from those in the stands, to the markets, to the labs. If we succeed, we succeed in branding a quality and a food safety standard better than any other in the country, and we succeed in branding Aroostook as the place that knows how to take care of its land and its people.
When I called the epidemiologist in Alaska to ask what they learned after a fiddlehead illness outbreak, he said to me, “You’re from Maine? You guys probably know more than we do about fiddleheads.” I really think we do, and I, for one, am always ready to learn more.
I am happy to share the simple harvesting guidelines with anyone who is interested. Mr. Beaulieu and others are welcome to call me at 316-6776 if they would like to know more.
Leah Cook
Northern Girl, LLC
Van Buren
