Foragers concerned as ID apps misidentify toxic mushrooms

Mushroom foraging in New South Wales is legal but experts warn of deadly risks Thu 6 Aug 2026 at 9:12am In short: More and more people are turning to their phones to identify wild mushrooms despite them being unreliable. Experienced foragers are urging amateurs to pick with an experienced guide and avoid relying on ID apps. What's next? NSW Health does not recommend picking and eating wild mushrooms. Searching through the forest for wild mushrooms is an ancient and romantic tradition. As the weather cools, foragers like Robbie Robinson head to the woods to hunt for gold. The professional forager has spent more than 40 years gathering wild mushrooms, and selling them to restaurants across Sydney and regional New South Wales. "They're wild, so the nutrients that go into anything commercial or industrial is a very different set of nutrients compared to what's out here in the wild," Mr Robinson said. "You get seasonal variation every year." Wild mushrooms often grow in the undergrowth of pine plantations and state forests. Popular edible mushrooms include the saffron milk cap and slippery jack, but identifying which mushrooms are safe to eat is a life saving skill. Some toxic varieties mimic safe varieties, the most notorious being the death cap mushroom, which can cause severe illness and even death. This poses a risk to amateur foragers, and has led to the development of a range of digital tools to help identify safe varieties. However there are concerns these tools are leading foragers astray. A recent study published in the scientific journal NPJ Science of Food, found that AI-mediated mushroom identification tools have a trend of being inaccurate. The researchers found the top-performing app failed to correctly identify the mushroom in nearly 15 per cent of cases. The other tools were even less reliable, with one app providing incorrect information in over 90 per cent of tests. Find a guide For more than 25 years, expert forager and educator in foraging in Lithgow Diego Bonetto said it's great to see more people picking wild produce. But he is concerned about a noticeable increase in people using mobile phones to help them forage. "You go out and harvest what you know is edible, and it's not going around trying to match the picture from the phone with what you're looking at in the fields," Mr Bonetto said. "So go out with someone, at least for the first and second time, to know what to do." Mr Bonetto said amateur foragers should seek hands on experience with mushrooms, alongside an experienced picker. "Mushroom foraging, like anything else, needs to be done in knowledge," he said. "However, something new is the people with the assumption of knowledge." Life-threatening risk While it is legal to forage in New South Wales state forests, the state's health department does not recommend picking and eating any wild mushrooms. According to the Food Safety Information Council, the Australian Poisons Information Centre receives about 900 calls yearly about people eating wild mushrooms, with about one in three cases requiring hospital treatment. Consuming certain mushrooms can also be fatal, such as in the high-profile Victorian case where three people died after consuming a beef wellington containing death cap mushrooms. "If we think about mushrooms specifically, it's the fact that they are in some cases toxic, and in some cases are extremely toxic," UNSW associate professor of food microbiology Julian Cox said. "In a food safety sense, anything could be contaminated within the natural environment by, say, faecal matter from various animals, and that might carry bad bugs from bacteria through to parasites." Mr Cox said the "hand-me-down" process increases the risk of consuming a toxic mushroom. "I always worry that one misstep, one bad pick, and that chef could be potentially causing harm to their patrons … but as adults, we pay our money and make our choice and take our chance. "Going to a restaurant that is based on local produce, foraged ingredients, especially, I think it's important to say to people there is a potential risk of food safety issues." Wild mushrooms on the menu While there are risks, there is a strong preference for wild mushrooms in chefs' kitchens. Mr Robinson said a lot of the knowledge and education about foraging is passed down through word of mouth from chefs. "I knew European chefs that had been using different wild mushrooms in Europe, and from that point of view they were very helpful in passing along knowledge to me," he said. "I read a lot as well, I tracked down people who were already known for their foraging, so it was a combination of conversation, reading, and, of course, the most important thing is that you come out into the forest." With the risk of a potential mix up, Mr Robinson said it is ideal to forage at first with someone who knows what you can or cannot pick. Once you have honed the skill, he said it is knowledge you do not lose. "Once you've defined them by colour and smell and touch, it's like knowing that a rose is a rose and a daffodil is a daffodil, and you don't forget that knowledge and you take it with you for the rest of your life."