West Africa West Africa or Western Africa is the westernmost region of Africa. The United Nations defines Western Africa as the 16 countries of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cape Verde, The Gambia, Ghana, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Mali, Maurit ...

n smokie is a food prepared by

blowtorch A blowtorch, also referred to as a blowlamp, is an ambient air fuel-burning gas lamp used for applying flame and heat to various applications, usually metalworking. Early blowtorches used liquid fuel, carried in a refillable reservoir attache ...

ing the fleece off the unskinned carcass of an old

sheep Sheep or domestic sheep (''Ovis aries'') are domesticated, ruminant mammals typically kept as livestock. Although the term ''sheep'' can apply to other species in the genus ''Ovis'', in everyday usage it almost always refers to domesticated s ...

goat The goat or domestic goat (''Capra hircus'') is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (''C. aegagrus'') of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the a ...

Legal status

The sale of the African variety of smokies is illegal in many western countries. Nevertheless, they are sometimes available on the

black market A black market, underground economy, or shadow economy is a clandestine market or series of transactions that has some aspect of illegality or is characterized by noncompliance with an institutional set of rules. If the rule defines the se ...

in cities with large expatriate

Muslim Muslims ( ar, المسلمون, , ) are people who adhere to Islam, a monotheistic religion belonging to the Abrahamic tradition. They consider the Quran, the foundational religious text of Islam, to be the verbatim word of the God of Abrah ...

populations. This prohibition is largely due to fear of the possibility of transmission of

scrapie Scrapie () is a fatal, degenerative disease affecting the nervous systems of sheep and goats. It is one of several transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), and as such it is thought to be caused by a prion. Scrapie has been known since ...

and

bovine spongiform encephalopathy Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is an incurable and invariably fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. Symptoms include abnormal behavior, trouble walking, and weight loss. Later in the course of t ...

(BSE, mad cow disease), deadly, degenerative

prion Prions are misfolded proteins that have the ability to transmit their misfolded shape onto normal variants of the same protein. They characterize several fatal and transmissible neurodegenerative diseases in humans and many other animals. It ...

diseases A disease is a particular abnormal condition that negatively affects the structure or function of all or part of an organism, and that is not immediately due to any external injury. Diseases are often known to be medical conditions that ar ...

that are spread by ingestion of nerve and brain tissue from infected

ungulates Ungulates ( ) are members of the diverse clade Ungulata which primarily consists of large mammals with hooves. These include odd-toed ungulates such as horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs; and even-toed ungulates such as cattle, pigs, giraffes, cam ...

such as sheep, cows and goats. Furthermore, butchering an ungulate carcass with the skin intact and unsterilized considerably raises the risks for induction of fecal coliform bacteria such as ''

E. coli ''Escherichia coli'' (),Wells, J. C. (2000) Longman Pronunciation Dictionary. Harlow ngland Pearson Education Ltd. also known as ''E. coli'' (), is a Gram-negative, facultative anaerobic, rod-shaped, coliform bacterium of the genus ''Escher ...

'' or ''

Salmonella ''Salmonella'' is a genus of rod-shaped (bacillus) Gram-negative bacteria of the family Enterobacteriaceae. The two species of ''Salmonella'' are ''Salmonella enterica'' and ''Salmonella bongori''. ''S. enterica'' is the type species and is fur ...

'' into the meat and is thus banned in the UK by law. This risk is heightened because the smokies are generally produced in covert (and often grossly unsanitary) butchering facilities and handled without proper sanitary procedures. Furthermore, the goats and sheep used are traditionally old, worn-out or lame animals bought inexpensively from milk and wool farms and are not intended for human consumption. Since the process of producing a smokie requires that the skin and wool of the carcass be left in place and burned in one piece, the

spinal cord The spinal cord is a long, thin, tubular structure made up of nervous tissue, which extends from the medulla oblongata in the brainstem to the lumbar region of the vertebral column (backbone). The backbone encloses the central canal of the spi ...

is not removed from the carcass prior to consumption. Thus, consumers (however careful) may unwittingly ingest tissues from the

nervous system In biology, the nervous system is the highly complex part of an animal that coordinates its actions and sensory information by transmitting signals to and from different parts of its body. The nervous system detects environmental changes th ...

, potentially exposing themselves to scrapie or BSE prions. For this reason, UK laws strictly forbid the sale of meat from cattle or sheep with the nervous system and skin still attached.

Exposé

On 29 March 2005, and again on 6 April, the

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...

Legal status

Exposé

Legalisation movement

See also

References

External links