Lamb hearts

I could probably special order lamb heart. And I know a few places that sell lamb, pig, calf, and cow heads--either regularly or be special order. . Mostly Mexican markets and some specialty butchers.

#16.Your link says that the Hendra virus aks Nipah virus might have come from some horses in Australia and giant wild fruit bats could be the natural host of the virus.

trib... from my link above
>Nipah virus was initially isolated in 1999 upon examining samples from an outbreak of encephalitis and respiratory illness among adult men in Malaysia and Singapore. Its name originated from Sungai Nipah, a village in the Malaysian Penninsula where pig farmers became ill with encephalitis.

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i'm not a biologist so i can't translate it for you, but remember hearing something once about malaysian pig farms that were being built into the rain forests, thus introducing pigs to exotic jungle deseases, and the link is what a 30 second google along those lines produced..

i'm sure there would be a disectation on the subject somewhere though
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BTW i'd be game to try the eyes if you tried em first

The outbreaks of Nipah virus are associated with loss of fruit bat habitat--for example, when rainforest is converted to hog farms. From WHO:

Infected bats shed virus in their excretion and secretion such as saliva, urine, semen and excreta but they are symptomless carriers. The NiV is highly contagious among pigs, spread by coughing. Direct contact with infected pigs was identified as the predominant mode of transmission in humans when it was first recognized in a large outbreak in Malaysia in 1999. Ninety percent of the infected people in the 1998- 1999 outbreaks were pig farmers or had contact with pigs.

Now, on to Intensive Agriculture Implicated in Transmission of Deadly Nipah Virus to Humans
>Between the 1970s and the 1990s, pig and mango production tripled in Malaysia. Mango trees were typically planted near pig enclosures, attracting fruit bats to the area. As bats fed and roosted in the trees, nearby livestock became infected with Nipah virus, which eventually spread to farm laborers.

thanks, knew someone would have done a study/disectation on the subject

Pig's head (I think parboiled and the roasted, but I'm not sure) used to be the traditional New Year's Day dish among at least some of the black population of Washington DC. Served with black-eyed peas. I haven't been in any of the relevant markets in December in many years so I don't know if you still see pigs staring at you from the butchers' cases.

The black-eyed peas are probably African, but the boar's head as a seasonal dish goes back to England.

I ate lamb's hearts a few times as a child (in Ireland in the 1980s). Since then the only time I've eaten them was as fast food in Iran, where grilled-offal shops (well, strictly speaking, 'heart-and-liver' shops, but they also sold kidneys and ordinary meat) were often the only alternative to a diet of rice and kebab.

One of the few other alternatives was 'kalle-pache', which involved a sheep's boiled head staring at you from the tray of head-and-hoof based soup.

#10 - not gristly at all, for reasons explained by VinnyD, but definitely could be on the chewy side. Nice flavour though. Apparently part of the reason they went off the menu in the Rua household was that my da didn't enjoy the preparation process.

It's fairly new that more people in the West don't eat innards anymore.

People from poorer countries can't afford to throw away all that protein or turn it into dog or cat food.

Pig's head is still sold as head cheeses in practically all European countries.

fearrua..., did you ever have "nettle tea" as a youngster in ireland?
used to live on me irish uncles farm and in the springtime we'd pick baby stinging nettles and make a soup out of them..
was good stuff too, never sure if it was generally on the irish menu or if we were just an odity for eating stinging nettles