Offal, step by step

1. Inspecting the organs

Before eating, look at the organs: they are the best proof that the animal was healthy.

1. Light and a clean knife — Look at the organs in good light, with a clean knife. All the organs of one animal stay together until the inspection is finished.
2. Liver — Look at both sides, feel it, and make several cuts through the tissue and through the bile ducts.
3. Lungs — Feel them all over. Healthy lungs are soft, pink and crackle like a sponge. Cut into any hard spots.
4. Heart and kidneys — Open the heart and look at the muscle inside and out. Take the fatty capsule off the kidneys and spleen and look at the colour and the surface.

Why: Inspection takes five minutes and is done straight after the organs come out. In the countryside the farmer inspected the liver and lungs before anything else. Today some offal is eaten without inspection, and that's the most common mistake.

• An inspection record for every animal shows your herd's or flock's problems from year to year: fluke, cysts, worms.
• When you're not sure what you're seeing, call the vet.

2. When not to eat

Some findings mean trim it off; others mean eat nothing and call the vet.

1. Fluid-filled blisters — Cysts in the liver or lungs, from pea to apple size, mean hydatid disease. Don't eat the whole organ, and tell the vet.
2. White spots — Trim off a few cloudy white spots (milk spots) on a pig's liver. A liver full of spots isn't eaten, and the herd is treated.
3. Serious signs — Yellow fat, a dark and fragile spleen, small white lumps in the heart or a bad smell: eat nothing and call the vet.
4. The dog and waste — Organs with cysts are disposed of by the rules, never to the dog. Dogs get offal only cooked, and they're wormed against tapeworms regularly.

Why: Hydatid disease matters most because of people. A dog that eats a raw organ with cysts gets a tapeworm, and the eggs reach people via the dog's coat and unwashed hands. So organs with cysts never go to a dog.

• Pigs: an enlarged, dark spleen and bleeding in the kidneys and skin can be African or classical swine fever. Stop work, take nothing off the holding and report it at once to the vet or the authority.
• The brain and spinal cord of older cattle, and of sheep and goats over a year old, aren't eaten, under the BSE and TSE rules.

3. The cold chain · Locked

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4. Liver, heart and kidneys · Locked

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5. Lungs, tongue and tripe · Locked

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6. Brawn · Locked

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