Unusual Ingredient of the Week-Goat Saliva (YES, GOAT SALIVA!)

Judging from the rumblings in cyberspace over the past several months, goat meat is about to become the next big thing. I have eaten some wonderful goat dishes prepared by my Haitian friends in Central Florida. Freya, however, hasn’t had the opportunity to try this Caribbean favourite, but she was determined to make some after seeing Hugh F-W prepare curried goat on his show. Curried goat is delicious, so naturally I was excited when Freya decided to purchase some goat meat so she could weigh in on the issue.
I may have mentioned this in the past, but we live in a cultural wasteland. I can only imagine the look on my local butchers face if I were to go in and ask for a kilogram of goat, thank you very much! It would probably be akin to the time I walked into a Lakewood, Colorado liquor store and asked for a case of Guinness that hadn’t been chilled (I love very warm stout you see). The guy at the counter, obviously well versed in customer relations, said, “This is America, son. We drink our beer cold.” So the logical place to turn was, as usual, the internet.
A Google search for goat turns up a plethora of results, some very unexpected. Included among these was a health supplement website selling goat saliva. At first I thought they were kidding, but apparently not. The website makes claims about the curative properties of goat saliva which seem a bit farfetched. Among others, they claim that aloe vera and goat saliva have been considered equally useful at treating cuts and burns by tribal cultures for centuries. I had to wonder why, if this was so, had I never heard of this remedy.
The website also offers several links to scientific papers on the benefits of goat saliva. Following these links made me even more sceptical though as they all seem to relate to the relationship between plants and herbivores. If there was any proof to be found in these links as to the validity of their claims, I wasn’t going to find out as a payment was required by all of them to review the text in full. Some of the links were so incomplete that the entire study title wasn’t viewable without a cash transaction. If you’re a bit more financially well endowed than I, please feel free to read the articles and let me know what you find out.
Fortunately, another search of Google, this time with the key words Goat Saliva, was much more beneficial. Apparently I’ve been living under a rock because this is for real. Unfortunately, it’s not necessarily based on any legitimate science. If one decides to draw an inference from an article I found on Portland Food and Drink.com, the proponents of this sort of dietary supplement also recommend eating sand!
The scarier aspects of ingesting goat saliva are revealed by articles about rabies in goats. I imagine that rabid goats are a rarity, but as the supplement industry is free from FDA standards, how would you know that what you're getting isn’t going to lead to a long stay in the hospital.
If you are willing to leave your doubts and concerns at the door though, the makers are happy to expound on the virtues of their product, amusingly called Goatslick.
It’s available in two forms. The first is a salve of concentrated goat saliva extracted from goats fed on a diet rich in nettles, a natural anti-inflammatory. The second version is goat saliva au naturale to be used as a “flavorful addition for use in cooking and baking”.
The makers are so convinced of their claims that they even give away free samples. Of course, we had to take advantage of the offer of a gratis 6 oz. bottle (and 1 oz. sachet of the salve).
After two months, our samples finally arrived. The label on the bottle has a cute picture of a goat and boldly declares “Aloe Vera of the 21st Century”. In much smaller print it indicates that the bottle contains 98% goat saliva. Given the propensity of the common goat to eat just about anything and everything it sees, and given the amount of detritus that a good shake of the bottle reveals, that 2% is a very scary number. The label on the back reassures us that the 2% is a combination of a natural stabilising agent and plant matter consistent with the organic diet of free-range goats.
Freya and I don’t have the guts to try this yet. I think it will probably occupy a position on the shelf in the living room next to the King Oscars Fish Balls in a Can as part of our Food As Pop Art collection. If you are braver than we, or you have your own collection of food oddities, you can get your own FREE SAMPLES from the website.
Good Luck!