Where the Great Chieftan is an outlaw

Published on Sunday 11 January 2004 00:00

SWEAT beaded his forehead as the queue edged closer to the customs checkpoint at JFK.

Trying desperately to appear calm and unconcerned as he approached the black-uniformed officials was starting to take its toll on the international smuggler.

As it came to the moment when he would have to run the gauntlet, the two pounds of illicit substances in his bag seemed to become heavier and anyone who looked closely would have noticed the knees just visible at the hem of his kilt were knocking.

But this 30-something Scotsman was fired by a patriotic zeal to help an underground organisation of kindred spirits devoted to one thing - haggis.

Across America, thousands of people are preparing to celebrate Burns’ Night by reading ‘Address To A Haggis’, the tongue in cheek tribute to Scotland’s national dish by its national bard.

The only trouble is traditional versions of the dish are banned and importing meat from Scotland is virtually impossible because of the tortuous process of winning approval from the US Food and Drugs Administration.

The hawk-eyed FDA deems lung - a common ingredient in haggis - to be unfit for human consumption, a ruling thought to date back to the 1930s when there were unsubstantiated fears about the spread of tuberculosis.

The ban leaves haggis fans in the States with two options - put up with an inferior US version of the dish, or rely on smugglers who risk a $1,000 fine to bring the genuine article 3,000 miles across the Atlantic or over the border from Canada.

Jock Smith, 65, has become a king of the Burns’ Night circuit since emigrating to Wisconsin from Alloa five years ago, giving the address to the haggis at dinners from Maryland to San Diego.

The president of the Robert Burns Club of Milwaukee and a member of the Robert Burns Association of North America’s executive committee, he has eaten more than his fair share of dodgy haggis.

"The worst one was like chewing cardboard. It was really dry as a bone and just fell apart when you put it on your plate. It was like a pile of sawdust," he said. "I went to a Burns supper in Annapolis in Maryland and they came out with a haggis on a platter and it was the only one I’ve ever seen with a pastry crust.

"It was like a mince pie. They still addressed it, but when he said ‘cut you up wi’ ready sleight’ he did it so gently, like you would cutting a pie."

Smith, who started reading Burns poems at the age of 10 while at his ailing great-grandfather’s bedside, has gone to some lengths to provide a more traditional haggis, contained inside the stomach of an animal.

Blackfaced sheep graze on a golf course where he plays some distance to the north of his home in Waukesha, 30 miles from Milwaukee. He "knows a man who knows a man" who can get illicit lung and other "pluck" - offal meat - from the sheep.

But he has also turned to some of Wisconsin’s many deer hunters for unofficial supplies, making a kind of "venison haggis" which he claims has a fine taste.

Along with other American followers of Burns, Smith said he had "heard" about haggis smugglers, but insisted he had not personally dealt with them or joined their ranks.

"I think there will be only a few official Burns clubs that actually get people to smuggle it in from Scotland," he said.

"But Canada was practically settled by Scots and there are authentic butchers up there. Anybody can get over that border, especially Americans, because you barely get asked any questions and the heightened security doesn’t seem to cause any problems.

"Some people in places like Detroit will go up there, get their haggis and smuggle it back over the border."

One of only a handful suppliers of legal and tasty supplies of haggis in the US is Cameron’s British Foods in Cape Coral, Florida, which supplies some 64,000 portions for Burns’ Night alone across continental America and also to the Bahamas and Virgin Islands.

But Don Cameron, whose grandfather was a butcher in Paisley until emigrating to the US in the 1950s, said he had to change the family recipe by removing all trace of sheep’s lung in order to comply with the rules.

Instead, he makes a haggis from lamb’s liver in a traditional method used by some Scottish butchers. The haggis is also served in a cow’s stomach, which many US chefs and restaurants will not allow in the mistaken belief that it is illegal, dangerous or both.

Cameron said: "Haggis in America is not really comparable to the haggis in Scotland. It’s not nearly as coarse and it’s more like a pt.

"I’m certainly not a big fan of the US FDA, having to deal with them on a daily basis. Nobody has died from eating haggis in Scotland as far as I know. It’s just overkill.

"If I was in Scotland I probably would use my grandfather’s recipe. But we’ve had this haggis recipe for 30 years and although it has been altered we certainly do get plenty of compliments."

However, he added: "There is a big difference between American Scots and Scots. American Scots are mostly second or third generation and while they are in for a taste of their heritage, there’s not that many that really like haggis that much."

Richard Badger, who is organising the Burns’ Night for the St Andrew’s Society of Washington DC, which dates back to the 1760s, is one of Cameron’s customers, having searched the country for a decent supplier.

"I had trouble with the casing, the stomach, used for the haggis. The chef of the hotel was very reluctant to be involved," he said. "But we are getting a ceremonial haggis in a casing from Florida. It just doesn’t look right cutting into a plastic bag."

Badger added: "I wouldn’t be opposed to someone who smuggled [haggis] through, but I don’t think I’d take the risk myself - I’m a chartered accountant. You’d lose your haggis and be stuck at the airport for hours. But the situation in the US is nonsense, it’s silly.

"I don’t think sheep’s lung is the kind of thing we should be concerned about. I have had haggis in Scotland and I like it."

James Macsween, of top haggis maker Macsweens of Edinburgh, admitted: "I’ve taken haggis into the States and declared it. I just said I had meat in my bags, or meat products. Either they search your bags or they don’t.

"I did declare I had meat and vegetable products in my bags and they weren’t interested.

"I took about 10 pounds, five pounds of haggis and five of vegetarian haggis. I will continue to try and take it in and I will declare it."

The Edinburgh-based family firm’s haggis recipe includes lamb’s lung, but Macsween said there was no one "true recipe".

"Haggis just needs to have offal in it. There’s quite a lot of different types of offal. You can classify sweetbreads, lung, liver, kidney, heart and other parts as offal," he said.

"Haggis isn’t even Scottish. It’s Scandinavian or Egyptian and brought over by the Romans. In every culture in the world you find something like haggis."

But for American Scots pining for a taste of the old country, there’s nothing like a haggis from Scotland and that’s where the smugglers come in.

A spokeswoman for the FDA and the US Department of Agriculture warned that they would have to surrender their food and faced a fine of up to $1,000 if caught. She also warned any attempt to ship in a major supply on a commercial basis could lead to a prison sentence.

The "Macsween method" of declaring it and hoping to get through appears to be safer. "If you declared the haggis as a meat product then they would just take it," said the spokeswoman, who admitted she did not know what haggis was.

One haggis smuggler told Scotland on Sunday his technique was to "forget to fill in the declaration form" then reel off a list of acceptable foods when questioned by an official.

"I just start saying ‘Well, I’ve got some chewing gum, some soda and some candy and I’ve got...’ and by then they just waive you through," he said. "If they stopped me after that, I’d just say I didn’t realise it was a problem and I was getting to the haggis but the guy cut me off before I’d finished."

Not all smugglers have the same confidence. As he approached the JFK checkpoint, the kilted 30-something - an otherwise respectable manager in a large Scottish company - was full of fear. "There were loads of signs with lists of things you cannot bring into the country - meats, fruits, vegetables, plants, everything you could think of apart from class-A drugs actually," he said. "I was really panicking."

Unfortunately, his two American friends did not appear to appreciate the risks he had taken. They smiled and thanked him for the gift, but later admitted they had decided not to eat the unfamiliar delicacy, clearly not impressed despite the "glorious sight" of the "honest, sonsie face" before them.