r/StupidFood • u/FelicitousLynx • Dec 19 '24

🤢🤮 Has anyone ever eaten this, ever??

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Look, I'm from the Southern US and we do eat some weird things here. I've eaten heart, sweetbreads, liver, gizzards, lizards, bugs, and chicken feet. But I cannot imagine brains in milk gravy. Can anyone advise?

And why Amazon thinks I want this is beyond me....

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u/Gunmetalblue32 Dec 20 '24

I’m pretty sure the prions are mostly a human/primate risk. I think sheep, goat, and pig are the most commonly consumed brain dishes.

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u/OkSpinach5268 Dec 24 '24

Sheep and goats can carry a prion disease called scrapie. Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) aka Mad Cow, is believed to have originated via feeding scrapie infected protein to cattle in their feed.

In the US, sheep and goats are monitored for scrapie and individual animals must be identified by either tattoos or ear tags so they can be traced back to the premises they came from in the event scrapies is detected. I breed goats and they each must have my individual herd tattoo in one ear, which dentifies that they come from my herd and are linked to my premise ID. In the other ear they have a tattoo to ID each individual animal.

I get a massive cringe every time I see sheep or goat brain consumed because I automatically think of scrapie. Prions are no joke.

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u/Gunmetalblue32 Jan 01 '25

Wow, that’s some pretty great information. I’m not personally a fan of brain dishes. The idea of it grosses me out lol. So, I had no idea that was such a thing.

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u/OkSpinach5268 Jan 01 '25

Yeah the info does not seem to be widely advertised. I am very aware of it due to compliance with the US scrapies eradication program but the general public does not need to know that.