Jo Evans-Pring, owner of Fanny's Rest Stop Cafe in Wales, saw a welcomed boost in sales after buying a number of ads through Google, but she was soon informed that there was a problem with one of her adverts. The tech giant took umbrage with a traditional lunch offering: Fanny's faggots and peas.
"I posted an advert on the website for Fanny's faggots with peas and onion gravy, a pretty traditional meal and one of my favourites... but the next day I got an email from Google saying they'd removed a post of ours," Evans-Pring said.
She and her staff "realised they'd moved the faggots one - and we couldn't think it was for any reason other than it having the word 'faggots' in it."
Evans-Pring initially found some humor in the mix-up, but she said it has gone too far.
"At first, we found it kind of funny," she said. "But ultimately we're... furious by the decision... Someone has made a decision that's affecting my livelihood."
Popular in parts of Wales and the English Midlands, faggots are meatballs made from offal and minced off-cuts, and often served with a side of peas. The meal has no connection to the homophobic term of abuse, yet Google's content filters, unable to detect context, have apparently deemed the dish bigoted, even if its search engine disagrees.
"The world's gone totally mad," Evans-Pring said, adding "People need to spend their time dealing with real problems, not things like whether or not the word 'faggots' when selling that meal is hateful."
Reader Comments
And faggot for 'woman', who knew? Part of the long history of misogyny, used from the 16th to early 20th centuries. And faggot had other uses no longer recognized. [Link]
Maybe Ggl should do a Search before making these decisions, lol.
In British cuisine, a faggot is—quite simply—a large meatball.
Faggots essentially are an old-fashioned British food and one that has sadly fallen out of favor in recent years, though they are seeing something of a revival. (However, in Birmingham and the area around Midlands—which is considered the home of faggots—they have always been a very popular food.)
With their revival, they are now being eaten all over the U.K.
Faggots were created as a dish that would utilize several parts of the animal—traditionally pig—including the heart, liver, and belly. The ball of ground pork originated in Western England as cheap food for the common country folk, and the first record of the dish in print was in 1851. Faggots became a typical meal for the farmers who then worked in the mines as that industry progressed. The popularity of faggots grew during the food rationing in World War II when the use of offal (internal organs and intestines of butchered animals) and leftover meats was not limited while cuts of meat were scarce.
With the resurgence of "nose-to-tail" eating, the British delicacy has shown itself once again. Waitrose, the British supermarket chain, began selling pre-made beef faggots in 2014, mostly the frozen, mass-produced Mr. Brain's brand made of liver and onions and sold in a sauce. These are, however, very different from the traditional faggots as they have a smoother texture and contain more water.
Traditionally, faggots are made from offal, usually pork, and from the bits of the animal that are generally discarded (the heart and the liver), making faggots a cheap and nutritious dish. The meats are then mixed with a selection of spices and herbs—most commonly mace, allspice, sage, and parsley—and sometimes breadcrumbs (this depends on which part of Britain they come from) and onion. The meat mixture is then rolled into large balls and wrapped in caul fat (the lacy, transparent membrane found in a pig's stomach) to hold them together. It is this use of caul fat which makes the faggot unique.The traditional way to serve faggots is with peas, commonly mushy peas, often accompanied by creamy mashed potatoes and a good dollop of onion gravy. Classic British faggots are easy to make, as the method is similar to meatballs—but faggots need a longer cooking time, simply because of the offal. You can also wrap the ball of meat in bacon instead of caul fat, or use beef instead of pork.
An example of Google gone mad.
I imagine Google running into a few difficulties with the English predilection for smutty double-entendres as well.
FANNY'SEXTRA BANGERS
FANNY'SEXTRA DUMPLINGS
etc.
LOL.
R.C.
Heinz Spotted Dick....[Link]