Gervase;

while I confess I have often found these sorts of foods repugnant (glad I knew what sweetbreads actually were before I tried them thinking they were pastry), I think one reason people may be averse to eating them these days (why I am, at any rate) is the decline in standards for hygiene in the meat industry. So much more salmonella, e coli, etc. being found. Also, animals are pumped full of all sorts of poisons (anti-biotics, hormones, not to mention whatever pesticides they absorb from their food or heavy metals or toxic waste in their drinking water); and these organs often are the sites where such poison is filtered, so toxins would be more concentrated than in muscle meats....

I used to love *fresh* calves' liver when I was a kid (we would get it fresh when we had our butchered side of beef delivered to us twice a year) but I would not touch it now with a ten foot pole...