Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Banning Haggis

Why, I mean, really, why? Why try to get haggis unbanned?

Scotland is considering lobbying the United States to lift a ban on haggis, hoping to boost sales of the sheep-stomach-based national dish.

The U.S. banned imports of Scottish haggis after Britain's outbreak of mad cow disease, which is linked to the human brain illness Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease.

Scotland's government insist its haggis -- which usually contains the heart, liver and lungs wrapped inside a sheep's stomach lining -- is safe and wants the ban lifted.

Put aside the stupidity of the US response in the first place: mad cow disease affected cows, haggis is supposedly made from sheep.

But the real problem isn't that, nor the fact that haggis itself is entirely disgusting. It's that haggis isn't in fact made from sheep at all. It's made, as the name suggests, from hte haggis, a rare animal. It has legs longer on one side than the other so that it can run around hillsides very quickly. What makes it so rare is that males and females normally have the longer legs on opposite sides, meaning that meeting for long enough to form any meaningful relationship is difficult: thus leading to their rarity.

Quite why the Scottish Government wants to increase the hunting of such an endangered creature no one is quite sure.

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