Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader generally doesn’t stay up late too much. That said, he is a big fan of TV’s Craig Ferguson and the Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. Your Maximum Leader DVR’s the Late Late Show and watches it the next day.

So, your Maximum Leader was watching Ferguson’s monolouge from the other night and learned something that he didn’t know. Ferguson was talking about Burns Night and haggis and mentioned that haggis is illegal to import into the US because it contains lung. Wha? Your Maximum Leader has wondered in the past why he could find canned (tinned?) haggis in Canada and Britain, but couldn’t find it in the US. Until last night your Maximum Leader figured “Hell… It’s haggis… How much demand could there be?” and assumed that the demand was so low that it wasn’t economical to import canned (or other) haggis into the states. But apparently there is a law against importing foods into the US that contain sheep’s lung. Again your Maximum Leader writes “Wha?.”

After a little poking around, sure enough, it seems to be the case that one cannot import haggis to the US due to the content of sheep’s lung in the pudding.

This caused your Maximum Leader to wonder if he’s had traditional haggis in the US. He knows he got a traditional haggis in Scotland. (If you can’t get it there where can you get it?) And he suspects that he could get it in Canada (if he wanted to). But he’s had haggis a few times in the US and now wonders if the sheep’s lung was included in the mix? Since it was domestically produced one may assume that it was. But if there is this import ban on sheep’s lung is there some sort of other ban on using the lungs of domestic sheep in haggis?

Your Maximum Leader wonders.

If you care… Here is the Craig Ferguson monolouge in which he discusses Burns night and haggis.

One final note… Your Maximum Leader and the Smallholder had threatened for years to have a “bad heritage food dinner.” This dinner would feature the most awful food we could make from our ethic backgrounds. This would be haggis for your Maximum Leader, and probably some sort of blood sausage for the Smallholder (who’s heritage is German). Since the Smallholder could raise a sheep for the meal, it might prove to be the opportunity your Maximum Leader needs to make an authentic haggis.

Carry on.