The great chieftain o’ the puddin’ race is to be celebrated by the nation’s butchers and the Robert Burns World Federation.
They have jointly declared 2014 the Year of the Haggis in the hope butchers can sell more of one of Scotland’s most iconic dishes and the federation can attract more members in the Scottish Government’s declared Year of Homecoming.
The humble haggis, which the Bard said was well worthy of a grace as long as his arm and far better than painch, tripe or thairm, will be celebrated across the country in the year-long promotion that is the brainchild of Lewis-born Burns aficionado Murdo Morrison, the federation’s press officer.
“We sat on the sidelines during the last year of homecoming and did nothing,” said Mr Morrison, 75. “At the end of the year we regretted it so have this year decided to up our game and take an active role through promoting the haggis.”
The hope is to launch the year of celebration with a well-known Scottish celebrity taking delivery of the first haggis of the season before the Burns’ Night celebrations on January 25 in the same way as the first grouse are delivered on the Glorious Twelfth.
That will be followed by a parliamentarian reciting Burns’ Address to a Haggis in Gaelic on the steps of Edinburgh’s Parliament House.
There will be competitions too. Children from five to 12 will be asked to send in drawings of a haggis, while there is a quiz for older children and adults.
The campaign is being sponsored by Banff-based Grampian Oat Products and Scobie and Junor, the food technology company headquartered in East Kilbride.
Mr Morrison said the haggis campaign would even extend into schools and the annual Burns Federation poetry competition which attracts entries from 80,000 schoolchildren. All the finalists in it next year will get a bag of oatmeal, one of the principal ingredients in haggis which also traditionally contains the heart, liver and lungs of sheep, onion, suet, spices and salt.
“On the surface this is all a bit of fun. But behind it we hope it will be very successful in increasing sales of haggis and in helping us boost our membership,” said Mr Morrison.
Beaton Lindsay, the president-elect of the Scottish Federation of Meat Traders’ Associations, said it was an excellent idea to celebrate the haggis, a fresh batch of which he made on Thursday at his shop in Perth.
“The 400-plus shops in the membership of the SFMTA will be invited to participate and help created increased demand for this popular national dish,” he added.
Haggis was at the time Burns wrote his Address to the Haggis a common dish of the poor. It was cheap, yet nourishing and made use of offal from sheep.
The US remains one of the few places in the world where a traditionally made haggis cannot be eaten as authorities there ban the lungs of sheep from entering the food chain.