by Emily King

Egyptian restaurants centered around liver and brains (deep fried and served with pita bread and a spicy sauce) have made for an interesting line of smuggling--frozen cow brains are sneaking into the country from surrounding nations.

On Friday, airport officials at Cairo’s international airport confiscated 420 pounds of cow brains from three travelers from Sudan. The bovine minds can be purchased cheaply in Sudan and sold for six times as much in Egypt, where dishes featuring cow brains are very popular.

This is the fourth foiled attempt at smuggling cow brains through the airport in Cairo in a week. The rise in confiscations points to an increase in this moneymaking scheme--had the plan not been discovered, the Sudanese travelers could have made more that $1,500 on the sale of the raw cow brains to Egyptian restaurants.

While eating animal brains is far from the average American palette, animal brains can still be purchased at some British and Italian butchers, specialty food stores, and ethnic markets and was a common meat in households throughout the 1950s. The brains of lambs, pigs, and cows are regularly consumed in many cultures.