Recipe: Skillet Fried Beaver Anal Glands

A tasty beaver with ripe young anal glands (Photo credit: NPS Photo)

Beaver anal glands have been a staple of the American diet for decades. In fact, you have almost certainly eaten many helpings yourself. You wouldn't know it, of course, since this fine ingredient is listed as "natural flavoring" on the back of most foodservice packaging. You can thank your congress for that. 

Disclaimer: This isn't a post featuring a recipe for skillet fried beaver anal glands (sorry, for those of you who really wanted to make this dish).

It is a post about how freeing Americans from excess government regulation is resulting in beaver anal glands (literally) being shoved down your throat without your knowledge.

How did I suddenly develop a keen interest in beaver anal glands?

It turns out I came across a blog by Bruce Bradley. Bruce is a former marketing exec who worked with heavy hitting corporate food giants like General Mills, Nabisco, and Pillsbury.

At Bruce's blog, you can learn about awesome lobbying successes such as disguising cow stomach, hair, feathers, and insects under innocuous-sounding ingredients like "enzymes," "cystine," "confectioner's glaze," and "natural red #4."

I thought you'd want to know.

Fried grasshoppers

And just to set the record straight, I'm not vehemently opposed to eating insects. My 7-year old made me eat some fried grasshoppers a few weeks back. They weren't bad. Tasted like shrimp.

But if I'm going to eat insects (or beaver anal glands) I want to know about it first. Is that too much to ask here in America?