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.
As a Scotsman i can categorically state that the haggis is not is danger, in fact we have just had one of the most successful Haggis shooting seasons in living memory.
In addition to which, 2007/8 had the best skiing and winter climbing conditions since the 1970s.
So come to Scotland, bring a raincoat,,,,, and the long-johns!
Caleb, you need to come to Missouri and go Snipe hunting with me. Snipe are a small bird that runs around on the ground very quickly. All you need to catch them is a bag/sack and a flashlight/torch because it’s done at night. You get to hold the bag while I run around with the light and chase them to you.
I think this is where the expression ” to get caught holding the bag” comes from.
Great intellects are skeptical.
– Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900),
German philosopher.
First it was polar bear, then haggis and now the penguins. OMG!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/09/2386597.htm?section=justin
I thought the ice problem was just on the north pole and that Antartic ice was on the mend. I guess I have just not been paying enough attention.
Skeptics are never deceived.
– French Proverb
Paddy, I understand that one needs to be drunk to enjoy didly diddly, but the bagpipe always grates!
“Haggis is at risk of dying out due to of global warming.”
You can tell that Louise Grey is not only a poor writer/editor, but she is also outdated. All modern, up-to-date environmental alarmists now speak in terms of “climate change”, not “global warming”. As Mike points out, this new mantra more safely embraces all possibilities for environmental disaster, regardless of what causes it or how it turns out.
98% of the sheep raising areas of the world are warmer than Scotland – much warmer.
How come there is still sheep left in the rest of the world. Shouldn’t they have been killed off by the warm loving lungworm long ago. What about in the middle east where sheep were domesticated. How did that happen where it is at least 10C warmer.
26 more days before Gore becomes Climate Czar.
Speaking of showboaters, is that bonehead kayaker back from his publicity stunt, or is someone gonna have to chisel his butt of the ice next summer?
Man, Arctic sea is really taking off this season:
http://www.ijis.iarc.uaf.edu/en/home/seaice_extent.htm
Sheep’s stomach stuffed with oatmeal and minced intestines – what a disgusting concoction!
You Britons are culinary barbarians! I think I’m going to get ill.
It just keeps getting better.
I nominate the WWF to the Charlatan Hall of Fame
http://www.foxnews.com/printer_friendly_story/0,3566,435202,00.html
http://www.worldwildlife.org/travel/2009/PDF's/WWFBinaryitem7982.pdf
Is this real?
Pierre, mon cher, you overlook foie gras.
Actually, it is only Scots who relish haggis. The English prefer something called faggots (No, not that), which disgusts even the Scots.
David Walton – “It was Robert Burns who indirectly inspired the ethnic disparagement “gringo” to emerge in the century following his death, how and why?”
Burn’s ballad “Green Grows the Rashes” was a popular sang in the United States, particular amongst the explorers/cowboys of the American Southwest. Mexican settlers in the area often heard the Americans singing or quoting the poem, and the phrase “green grows” morphed into “gringos” as a generic reference term for the Americans.
Do I get an A on the research paper? Actually, I knew this thanks to a book I read many years ago.
The amount of haggis exported from Libya has dropped to zero, so it obviously is affected by Global Warming.
“Dan McCune (11:12:49) :
First it was polar bear, then haggis and now the penguins. OMG!
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2008/10/09/2386597.htm?section=justin
I thought the ice problem was just on the north pole and that Antartic ice was on the mend. I guess I have just not been paying enough attention.
Skeptics are never deceived.
– French Proverb”
I guess ABC forgot to check the penguin’s natural habits. As is shown here, penguins feed in ice free water. So, if there feeding grounds are being threatened, it is because the Antarctic ice is expanding, not melting.
Another one for the list
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
From the BBC website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/highlands_and_islands/7648481.stm
A few days ago
On the subject of sheep, here’s a little reminder of how harsh winters sometimes were, before the late 20th century warming. This is from the book I’m reading at the moment, Frozen in Time, which describes the cold winter of 1947:
“Over a thousand sheep were ‘dead or dying’ on the moors around Ribblehead, North Yorkshire, and three farmers each lost over half their flocks. A farmer from Mallerstang in Westmorland’s upper Eden Valley, only moved onto his farm in the autumn of 1946, purchasing the stock of 500 ewes, all of which would have been carrying at least one lamb by the time the snow came. By the end of lambing time the following Spring, there were only 170 ewes and twelve lambs still alive. Some sheep in Lincolnshire had to endure a further hardship, for ‘flocks of hungry crows are attacking sheep and some have been killed.’ In the Lake District too, shepherds were ‘now armed with guns to combat flights of carrion crows which are the latest menace to mountain sheep. Deprived by snow of their natural food, dozens at a time are swooping down on helpless sheep trapped in drifts, first tearing off their ears and plucking their eyes, then devouring the whole carcass.’ Farmers in Merionethshire also reported large numbers of foxes ‘driven by hunger from their mountain lairs to the lowlands, making daylight raids on sheep.’ Around two million sheep were to die during the winter, 500,000 acres of wheat was lost and the frosts also destroyed much of the late potato crop, promising yet more hunger and misery for British farmers.”
Restores a sense of perspective, doesn’t it.
Hippies have lung worms do to global warming and are dying? There must have been something in the Kool Aid back in the 60’s.
Sorry, my mistake. I though you were talking about hippies, not haggis.
The article reaches it’s “points” by assuming that Scotland has had a series of less cold winters solely because of (man made) global warming.
It does not consider the effects of EEC directives at all, when they may have been great.
AND, that the less cold winters could be due to something other than AGW,
natural climate variation for instance.
On the brighter side though for haggis lovers, nature appears to be about to redress the balance if overal world (apparent) temperature trends are anything to go by.
A cold winter or two will do the trick – soon. 😉
Here is a link to a temperature graph comparing Aberdeen (Scotland) with Belfast (Ireland): Aberdeen/Belfast
And here is a link to a temperature graph showing Aberdeen January temps
Aberdeen – January – January temperatures are back to where they were in the 1930s
(Data from the NOAA GHCN database to Jan 2007)
Caleb: You left off explaining why there are two types, left-legged and right-legged, of Haggi. The right-footers are the males, and the southpaws the females.
They’ve evolved this way so that they run into each other when they meet on steep slopes. The species would have died out years ago otherwise, because they’d never meet for mating.
Re: Haggis hunting
I would like to inquire — How does one obtain a license to hunt haggis and is the licensing limited? When is haggis season, and can good guides be had at a reasonable fee?
Re : Keiths’ answer to the History Challenge.
Good enough! I heard the story a little differently but it is likely that both are true. Irish immigrants escaping famine in large numbers were unable to find work (“Irish Need Not Apply”) and some hired on as mercenaries for the Mexican Army.
Lonely and longing for their homeland they sang songs familiar to them and “Green Grow The Rashes” was a favorite. Now imagine, night after night the Irish singing it around a campfire whilst in the midst of the regular army encampment.
Robert Burns may not have actually written “Green Grow The Rashes”. Some of what he did was the result of putting to paper the vocal traditions he researched. Nevertheless, the song is largely attributed to him and from what I have read the style (for those who know) is characteristic of Burns.
Here is a link comparing Aberdeen mean annual temperature anomalies to the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation AMO-Aberdeen – a much better correlation than with CO2.
Darn chart looks like a hockey stick, Alan.
Domestic haggis or wild haggis?
Discuss.
I wonder if variations in haggis populations can be tied to the chart Alan Cheetham has linked to.