The US has been asked to lift a decades-old ban on a particular food, with the request coming as the World Cup draws closer.
FIFA’s World Cup is now only weeks away, with 48 teams set to battle it out across the US, Mexico and Canada in pursuit of international football success.
Among the sides travelling to the tournament is Scotland, returning to the World Cup stage for the first time since 1998.
With Scotland due to play Haiti in their opening game in Boston on June 14, supporters in the famed “Tartan Army” are pressing American officials to reconsider the prohibition on haggis, which has been off-limits in the US since 1971.
Haggis is a traditional Scottish savoury pudding made from minced sheep’s heart, liver and lungs, combined with onions, and it’s widely regarded as Scotland’s national dish.
To push the issue into the spotlight, Scottish butcher and haggis supplier Simon Howie has joined forces with journalist Gordon Smart, launching a petition calling to “make haggis legal again”.
Fans making the journey to the US have also been given Scotland flags carrying the message: “no haggis, no party”.
Speaking of the campaign, Howie said: “Scotland football fans are widely recognised as the best in the world, and they are about to make the trip of a lifetime, but they’ll be doing it without access to their national dish. With such warmth and long-standing affinity between Americans and Scots we’re appealing to the USA to embrace this delicious delicacy and Make Haggis Legal Again.”
Meanwhile, Smart added: “For Scotland fans, summer 2026 is going to be a trip we’ll never forget. We’ll have the flags, the songs and the scarves and if this petition has anything to do with it, we’ll have the haggis too.
“Simon Howie is fighting for every Scot and honorary Scot out there, so let’s get behind the campaign and make history on and off the pitch. Because after all, if there’s no haggis, there’s no party.”
As part of the publicity drive, a tongue-in-cheek video has been released showing a Scot attempting to take haggis through security at Glasgow Airport, only to run into difficulties because the dish cannot legally be imported into the US.
The American ban dates back to the 1970s, when the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) raised concerns over a specific element of traditional haggis: sheep’s lung.
That long-running restriction has meant many Americans have little familiarity with the dish. A 2003 study reported that a third of US visitors to Scotland believed haggis was an animal.
Nearly a quarter of those surveyed even thought it might be something you could catch.