Authentic Scottish haggis was banned in the US in 1971 because it contained what?

Imports of traditional Scottish haggis have been banned in the United States since 1971. The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) has long objected to one of the key ingredients in haggis – sheep’s lung. No food for human consumption, whether made locally in the USA or imported from overseas, can contain sheep’s lung.

Authentic haggis is a savoury pudding containing sheep’s pluck – the heart, liver and lungs – minced with onions, spices and oatmeal. This is often encased in a casing made of the animal’s stomach.

Their long-standing reluctance to allow sheep lungs into human food was reinforced in 1971 with the emergence of ‘Scrapie’ in sheep and other cattle. However there is no scientific evidence to indicate that scrapie poses a risk to human health or indeed evidence that it has ever passed into our food chain.

Scrapie is a fatal, degenerative disease that affects the nervous systems of sheep and goats.