Beware: Chinese "Truffles" Ain't The Real Thing

[Daniel Rogov]

Sent to me by one of my faithful correspondents, an article in the Globe and Mail about Chinese "truffles" that are poor imitations but are being too often sold as "the real thing". See the article at http://www.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/ ... rnational/

The article states that human inspectors have been assigned to determine which are the phonies. I would ask though, wouldn't it be easier to use truffle-snuffling pigs or beagles?

Best
Rogov

[Paul Winalski]

It's easier to use beagles. Pigs like to eat truffles, and they're damn smart and clever. They often sniff out the real thing, dig it out, then eat the truffle and then grunt and whine to their human owner, "no--I must have been mistaken--no truffle here after all." Dogs, in contrast, are perfectly willing to sniff out truffles for their human owners, but they have no interest in eating them. And dogs are too stupid to obfuscate, anyway.

-Paul W.

[Ian Sutton]

Paul
Dogs will eat them - but can be trained not to (or at least not to whilst the owner is in the immediate vicinity!). The guy we spoke to in Piemonte reckoned that cross-breeds rather than pure breeds made the best truffle sniffers.
regards
Ian

[Daniel Rogov]

Ian, Hi....

Indeed in Piedmont mixed-breeds are prefered but in Perigord the beagle is the dog of choice, the mixed-breed dogs having to be trained and the beagles natural truffle snufflers.

Best
Rogov