Was just prompted by a remark in another thread about the size of pigs some abattoirs will handle, and wanted to ask: what attitudes people have found from their abattoirs regarding what they can get back.
We are very fortunate at the moment in having found a good local abattoir that lets us have everything we want. For the products we make we use the blood, the caul fat, the intestines themselves, the stomach and all the standard organs - liver, kidneys, heart, lungs. The whole pig in fact, barring gall baldder and spleen and eyeballs. We have to supply sealable barrels and have to be there on the day of slaughter to collect the blood and intestines (and put up with a fair degree of jocular cursing)and the rest is supplied when we collect the carcasses, but we are not proscribed from taking any of it.
Where we used to live the local abattoir refused to let us have blood and became almost apoplectic when I enquired about the intestines (and even became cagey about letting us have the liver, heart, lungs etc after that - I think I had marked my card as being some kind of weirdo).
I have friends in other parts of the country and Scotland who are not even able to get the liver and hearts, which strikes me as a huge con - the abattoir are surely selling it on elsewhere. To say nothing of it being the property of the customer unless the law dictates otherwise.
What are other people's experiences on this front?