From the Now I’ve Heard Everything department. First it was polar bears, now it is sheep guts.
The Telegraph.co.uk
By Louise Gray, Environment Correspondent
Haggis is at risk of dying out due to of global warming.
The meat pudding is known to children as a rare tartan creature found only in the Highlands but the rise of the common parasite lung worm, which is thriving due to global warming, is putting it at risk.
Haggis is made from a sheep’s stomach, which is stuffed with oatmeal and minced intestines. But butchers are finding it more and more difficult to get hold of the principle ingredient of sheep’s lung, as so many are infected with lung worm.
Dr Sandy Clark, the vetinary centre manager at the Scottish Agricultural College in Thurso, said the parasite was thriving because it is able to survive in grazing all year round in the warmer climate.
Although lung worm will not necessarily show up in a healthy sheep or affect all the meat, it will make the lungs of the animal unfit for human consumption.
“Lung worm has been at a very low level and did not cause serious problems in sheep but with the changing climate and availability of the parasite it is becoming a problem,” he said.
He also said lung worm has increased because new technologies mean farmers are only medicating animals that are shown to have traces of other diseases, rather than treating all animals on a regular basis.
“The sad fact is that the disease is causing the lungs to be condemned for human consumption because of the lung worm damage,” he added.
Joe Findlay, owner of Findlay’s Butcher in Edinburgh, said it was a struggle to source lung from Scottish farms so butchers are turning to Ireland instead.
The award-winning butcher said that the growing demand for haggis across the world was because of the fashion for societies dedicated to Scottish poet Robert Burns and the fact that the Scottish diaspora was also making it more difficult to source the ingredients.
“It could well get worse, we are just keeping our fingers crossed,” he added.
The Vermont Pub and Brewery has not yet issued a statement indicating how they will deal with the issue during their annual Burns Night celebration, when they serve Haggis alongside a number of excellent single-malts.
Jim Arndt (20:57:05) :
balut (rotton ckicken fetus in the shell from the Philippines).
Whoever gave you that definition was either fooling you or didn’t know what he was talking about. Balut is boiled fertilized duck’s egg. It’s neither chicken nor rotten.
“I fail to see the problem with the story.”
That, my friends, is the difference between “reading comprehension” and “critical thinking.”
Jim Arndt,
I always thought balut was made from duck. Whichever it is, the rule still stands never kiss anyone who has just eaten balut.
Word is, Global Warming has caused housing crisis as well. We are all doomed, Al Gore was right. We need to nuke Iran now and cause global winter to save the planet.
I went to school in northern Scotland, and we were served haggis in the cafeteria at least twice a week, either for lunch or dinner. Loud groans could be heard whenever it appeared. I had a voracious appetite back then, and would eat large amounts of anything, and it never killed me, however I had absolutely no idea haggis was in any way special.
When I first arrived the local boys offered to take me haggis hunting. They told me there were two types, left-legged and right-legged. The legs of a haggis were longer on one side so they could stand level on steep hills. I was told the trick of hunting them was to get them to turn around on the hillside. This would cause the haggis to fall over, and then you were suppose to clout it on the head with a club. However I was warned they were dangerous.
The plan was to hand me a club, and leave me on a hillside as the other boys ran around the hill, driving the left-legged haggis around to me. I told them I wasn’t born yesterday. What did they take me for? Some sort of sucker and chump?
Then I told them the world was going to run out of oil by 1980, and they had better get back to burning peat, and not depend on North Sea oil. I was absolutely serious, for this was what I’d been taught. So perhaps I was a bit of a sucker and chump after all.
Moptop, I guess anonymity makes one more free to be both arrogant and rude…
Stan, it’s, imo, both. It’s warmer weather, and the increase in larvae that allows and I mentioned, andand it’s changing farming practices.
Global Warming is also responsible for the increased wearing of kilts. Another curse on mankind.
I’m afraid that this article is typical of what we have as climate change “discussion” in the UK. The BBC has long ceased to provide a balanced view, witnessed recently with a studio debate on wind farms discussed with only advocates of wind turbines. Even the Telegraph, with the distinct exception of Mr Christopher Booker, has capitulated to the climate change lobby by cherry picking and printing without any form of questioning, any report that blames climate change for anything. Just yesterday we had a report from the National Trust ( Full article at this link http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/10/08/eawater108.xml ) which warns that we must manage our water supplies more efficiently because of the joint threats of drought and floods caused ” by climate change ” !!
Covers all eventualities I suppose !
I know it’s a wikipedia link but…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut
I’d much rather eat haggis!!
The article also states: “…it was a struggle to source lung from Scottish farms so butchers are turning to Ireland instead.” If global warming is causing an increase of the disease in Scotland, then why isn’t it causing an increase in Ireland too? Ireland is further south and should already be warmer.
They should start raising Haggis in Alaska, where at 8 degrees F, temperatures are running nearly 10 degrees below normal this month.
http://www.wunderground.com/history/airport/PAFA/2008/10/9/MonthlyHistory.html
Now we know what Sarah Palin meant when she said that Alaska has been the most affected by global warming.” She was using a racist code phrase against Eskimos and Scots.
Well, that’s just offal.
Seriously, though, modern-day haggis is made quite differently than the traditional. Here in the U.S., sheep’s lungs were banned from use in 1971, as were other ingredients later on. The casing is now artificial, not the sheeps stomach. There is also vegetarian haggis.
This article is simply more of the same, tired globaloney warming the MSM never seems to tire of serving up, and people still seem to gobble down.
If global warming kills off the bagpipe I will never question again.
What about lutefisk? I hope it’s not in danger.
Ewe shouldn’t eat lungs anyway.
Maybe its the missing feedback mechanism. Animals make too much methane, planet heats up, lungs fill with worms, animals die methane levels drop.
Put that in the climate models.
Guys Made from both Chicken and Duck. And it is rotten just smell it once, my not “be” but man it smells. My wife is from the Philippines. They also have a dish called Chocolate meat which is made from pork blood and some guts. I have tried that but didn’t like it.
Caleb (05:08:23) :
Well done! Thanks for your posting. 🙂
I recommend Haggis as a great delicacy to you all , not to be sniffed at (in case of lung worms).
Where animal husbandry problems arise, some scam or other caused by the European Union and the Common Agriculture Policy is usually to blame.
Rule Brittannia!!
My family’s recipe for haggis:
Take a sheep, pull its head through its ass, stuff it into its stomach and hang it like a piniatta. Whack it ten times with a Lousiville slugger (note: DO NOT USE AN ALUMINUM BAT BECAUSE IT LENDS A METALLIC TASTE).
Take it down and have a medium sized family of 5, stomp it into the dirt and kick it around like a soccer ball. (American tourists work well here – we just tell them its a hundred years old tradition.) NOTE: Cold sugary beverages should be readily avialable as out of shape Americans, particulary their children will fatigue easily. Clapping hands, encouraging words, and any folk music that happens to be available will increase worker (guest) productivity.
After the haggis has been tenderized leave it out overnight. If it rains and the dirt gets washed off throw more dirt on it and leave it out for another 24 hours.
Cure the haggis by hanging it by its own intestines in your barn or from a street light while the anjou is prepared.
Anjou preparation: Take a week’s worth of garbage and place it in a metal dumpster, place the dumpster on a large grate under which a large fire can be built. Fill the dumpster 3/4 the way full with water, light the fire and bring to a boil, simmer for twelve hours. Remove the garbage, reduce the remaining liquid by 1/2. This is the anjou in which the haggis will be boiled.
Boil the haggis for 1 hour and simmer it for 3 hours. For extra flavor, take the tires off you car and add it with the haggis at the beginning.
Serves a medium sized family of 5 (Non American, of course.)
Enjoy!!
Let me get this straight. A planet fever of about 1F has given sheep a fever? It must be those warm winter nights! Doesn’t the Press ever insanity check these proclamations?
Simon: You don’t understand! Long ago the Irish taught the Scots how to make whiskey and play the bag pipes. Ever since, drunk Scots have terrorized the world with “music” played on their war pipes while the Irish have played fiddle and flute music while drinking.
Oh Guinness, my Haggis! What next will fall victim to AGW, malt for single malt?
UK papers especially seem to love this sort of gut churning, junk science.
History challenge —
It was Robert Burns who indirectly inspired the ethnic disparagement “gringo” to emerge in the century following his death, how and why?
Hey! I’m getting queasy here.
Lordy.
I have to squint my eyes every time I drop by.
How about a nice picture of Al Gore?
Hmmm . . . . nah . . . .bad idea.
OK. Stay with the sheep stomach.
But the single malt whisky is still fine, correct? The barley is still fine, correct? GW isn’t messing with my peat, is it? Tell me my good friends at Balvenie, Highland Park, Aberlour, Ardbeg, Lagavulin, Laphroig, Bunnahabhain, Dalmore, Dalwhinnie, Old Pulteney, Longmorn, Alberfeldy and Scapa, aren’t going to lower their production! Let the Isle of Jura be contaminated, however. Yech.
No global warming at Cairngorm Ski Resort.