About time to end this haggis insult

Fair fa’ your honest sonsie face

Great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race

Aboon’ them a’ ye tak yer place

Painch, tripe or thairm:

Weel are ye wordy o’ a grace’

As lang’s my airm.

It is a toast beloved of Scots the world over. Not only does it celebrate our National Bard Robert Burns, it also extols the culinary and nutritious virtues of the dish he so handsomely eulogised.

In pubs and clubs throughout Scotland the words of the famous poem are spoken on or around the poet’s birthday. And in every corner of the globe where expat Scots and people of Scottish descent gather, they stand to usher in that most appetising Caledonian cuisine item – haggis.

We Scots are mighty proud of haggis, we love its heartiness and the fact that a foodstuff favoured by the working classes has been exalted to the level of our national dish. And the fact it is eaten and enjoyed throughout the world only adds to that sense of satisfaction.

So every year, when we celebrate the Bard at Burns Suppers, a kilted Scot plunges a knife into the “great chieftain o’ the puddin’-race” to reveal the ‘gushing entrails” – as Burns so colorfully put it.

Except, that is, in America. The United States is a shocking blot on the haggis-lover’s landscape. The good old US of A delivered the culinary slap in the face to our Scottish heritage and identity in 1971 when it banned “real” haggis from these shores.

One of the key ingredients, sheep’s lung – which makes up between 10% and 15% of the recipe – found its way on to an American food import blacklist. It has never been removed and haggis aficionados have had to endure a poor substitute ever since. It even features on an American website called Most Disgusting Delicacies, which also includes tuna eyeball and tarantula.

For true Scots, haggis without the flavoursome lungs amounts to heresy. Imagine drinking a glass of water without whisky, it just wouldn’t be the same. What about Thanksgiving Day without turkey? There would be a national outcry.

Haggis is composed of the heart, liver and lungs of a sheep minced with oatmeal, suet and spices, soaked in stock and boiled in a sheep’s stomach. At a traditional Burns Supper, a kilted bagpiper pipes it into the room, carried on a silver platter, cut up in front of the assembled company, then flavoured with some good Scotch malt whisky.

I have eaten it every year since I was a teenager. No doubt I am biased but I find it delicious. Served, as it should be, with neeps (turnips) and champit tatties (mashed potatoes), it is as filling and heart-warming a delicacy as you will find anywhere.

No-one has ever died from eating a haggis – not a single person. Many have felt like death warmed up after the amount of whisky they consumed at the Burns Supper but that’s another story.

The haggis ban angers and offends purists in Scotland. Year after year they have called for it to be relaxed but without success. Even the upsurge of Scottish societies all over the US and the emergence of Tartan Day have failed to force the authorities to relent.

Lung-free haggis just does not cut it. And this in a country that happily sells aspartame – a sugar substitute linked to a host of health problems – scrapple, bleached chicken, and GMO corn fed beef.

As Robert Burns said:

Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware

That jaups in luggies.

But, if you wish her gratefu’ prayer

Gie her a Haggis.