It seems such an anachronism that the people of North America can’t experience the taste of proper Scottish haggis on Burns’ Night. Even with the long overdue lifting of the 1989 US ban on imports of Scotch lamb, anticipated to become effective in 2017, the US will still not accept any product that contains sheep lungs, one of the ingredients of authentic haggis, under a law that has existed since 1971 and the emergence of “scrapie” in sheep and other cattle.

This means that once the lamb ban is lifted, haggis producers in Scotland will have to alter their traditional recipes if they have any hope of cracking the lucrative US market of some 10 million Scots-Americans, and the Canadian market of five million, as well as those many more who have an emotional or cultural affinity with Scotland.

In the age of global gastronomy, it is a pity that this quintessentially Scottish dish – I mean in the sense that it was immortalised by the national Bard in his Address to the Haggis, and has become the must-have element of any Burns’ Supper – has to remain out of the reach of so many.

Haggis contains 15% sheep’s lungs (alongside heart, liver, onion, oatmeal, salt, pepper, mace and so on), but the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) states that sheep lungs can’t enter the US as a food because it has determined that such material made from sheep slaughtered in the US in inedible and so is not inspected for use as a human food material; sheep lung material from foreign inspection systems likewise are not permitted for consumption.

I understand it fears that grazing animals like sheep can pick up TB from the ground and pass it on to humans, yet as far as I can see there is very little evidence to prove any risk is significant.

In any case, as haggis producer James Macsween, who with Scottish agriculture secretary Richard Lochhead met with US agriculture officials in Washington last November to discuss the matter, put it to me: haggis is boiled twice during the manufacturing process, so if TB were present it would be killed off. In addition, the hygiene inspection system in our abattoirs is very rigorous; any contaminated parts would be discarded.

Of course haggis isn’t unique to Scotland and has been around for millennia. The ancient Greeks had a haggis of their own, immortalised by Aristophanes in The Clouds (though we don’t know what it was made of), as did the ancient Romans, who used pork, suet, egg yolks, pepper, lovage, ginger, rue, gravy and oil. In 17th century England, calf and pig were used.

Macsween also makes wild boar, venison and three birds (grouse, pheasant and duck) haggis, and use beef and pork for their M&S haggis.

Simon Howie uses beef heart and liver in his. Yet lamb haggis containing sheep pluck (heart, liver and lungs) is arguably the most traditional way of making it, presumably because sheep were plentiful and cheap and easily obtainable at the time Burns wrote his address in 1786 and into the 19th century – more so, perhaps, than the deer off the hill.

In her seminal 1826 book, The Cook and Housewife’s Manual, Meg Dods (actually journalist Isobel Christian Johnston) used sheep pluck for her haggis recipe, and describes how to let the windpipe lie over the pot “to permit the discharge of impurities”. Using up all parts of the animal was a characteristic of Scots cooking of the age.

However, in The Scots Kitchen, of 1929, F Marian McNeill has a recipe for deer haggis, using minced boiled heart and liver with suet, oatmeal, onions and seasoning and no lungs. Her Haggis Royal was made with leg of mutton, beef marrow, oatmeal, anchovies, parsley, lemon, cayenne, eggs and red wine; again with no lung.

What haggis must contain is offal, but you don’t have to use lung, so there is plenty of lamb haggis variations to explore for the US and Canadian markets. Canada, where one in five of the population has Scots roots, had its own ban on imported red meat lifted last November, though the Canadian Food Inspection Agency (CFIA) states that “livestock lungs intended for human food is prohibited”.

I understand frantic reformulations of traditional recipes are underway. After all, who would be so commericially daft as to refuse to enter the North American market? Scotch beef haggis is the most likely version to grace American dining tables at Burns Night 2017, once the US ban on imports of Scotch lamb has been lifted.

Whether there will be protests from consumers that what they’re getting isn’t authentic remains to be seen. Negotiations on the lung ban are ongoing but as the US says it does not plan to lift it, it seems “proper” haggis will be off the menu for some time to come.

Perhaps the final lifting of the lung ban, if it ever happens, may yet come about through pressure from within.

So, on behalf of our American friends, let’s raise a proxy toast to Burns’ Night 2018.