[Northkeep] Haggis

[wynfrith]

Haggis, Born in TheUSA   
Wed Jan 21, 8:22 AM ET  Add Oddly Enough - Reuters to My Yahoo! 
 

By Trevor Datson 

LONDON (Reuters) - A tiny Scottish firm has teamed up with a U.S. 
company to 
start the first industrial-scale production in America of Scotland's 
national 
dish -- haggis. 

   

Stahly Quality Foods, which employs just four people in the industrial 
new 
town of Glenrothes, believes the joint venture with a Chicago-based 
food 
processor can move 300,000 tins of the offal-based delicacy in its 
first year. 


The estimated 10 million Scots and people of Scottish descent that live 
in 
North America offer an appetizing market. 


But founder Ken Stahly's first venture into the United States was 
crushed by 
an import ban following the British foot-and-mouth disease outbreak of 
2001. 


"We were constantly getting e-mails and calls asking 'How can we get 
haggis 
over here?', Stahly said, as the Scottish diaspora across the globe 
prepares to 
toast the national bard Robbie Burns with haggis and whisky on January 
25. 


The U.S. launch is proving expensive for the firm, . 


"It's cost us a fortune so far -- the lawyers were charging us $290 an 
hour 
just to draft things like confidentiality agreements that will 
hopefully just 
sit in a drawer. But the potential is huge," Stahly said. 


Haggis is prepared in a sheep's stomach and is steamed or baked and 
served 
hot, but can also be revived when cold with a dash of scotch. Stahly 
will 
initially be offering two varieties from the Chicago plant -- 
traditional and 
vegetarian. 


The recipes, like the identity of the U.S. partner, are a closely 
guarded 
commercial secret, but most traditional haggis contains liver, heart, 
tripes, 
oatmeal, suet and spices. 


It also traditionally contains "lights," or lungs. 


But "mad cow disease," or bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE (news - 
web 
sites)), which can be transferred to humans as variant 
Creutzfeldt-Jakob 
Disease (news - web sites) (vCJD), put a stop to that in commercial 
haggis 
production as lungs are deemed "high risk material." 


HAGGIS HUNT 


All of the ingredients used in the Chicago plant will be sourced 
locally to 
avoid U.S. import restrictions on British meat products -- the irony 
being that 
BSE most recently recurred in the United States. 


Marketing could, however, prove a challenge. A recent poll of 1,000 
U.S. 
visitors to Scotland, by haggis makers Hall's of Broxburn, found that 
33 percent 
believed a haggis was an animal hunted in the highlands. 


But Stahly has launched a haggis recipe book which the founder hopes 
will 
spread the word among American consumers, along with trade shows and 
exhibitions,. If the venture proves a success, Stahly hopes to expand 
the range, possibly 
in conjunction with a Scotch whisky company. The marketing synergies 
are 
potentially huge. 


But so are the bureaucratic pitfalls. 


Three years after U.S. customs returned a batch of Stahly's 
Scottish-produced 
haggis on foot-and-mouth fears, British customs authorities turned back 
a 
trial case sent from Chicago.






Wynfrith  

If the thought of something makes me giggle for longer than 15 seconds, I am to assume that I am not allowed to do it. 




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