Foodies bent on acquiring some of the sticky stuff have to anesthetize the animal and then “milk” its nether regions. Save a Cow, Milk a Beaverīut getting a beaver to produce castoreum for purposes of food processing is tough. Instead of smelling icky, castoreum has a musky, vanilla scent, which is why food scientists like to incorporate it in recipes. If you look closely at one of our very old labels, the ingredients are alcohol, sugar, flavour (extract of vanilla beans), water added. While most anal secretions stink-due to odor-producing bacteria in the gut-this chemical compound is a product of the beaver’s unique diet of leaves and bark, Crawford added. The fragrant, brown slime is about the consistency of molasses, though not quite as thick, Crawford said. Because of its close proximity to the anal glands, castoreum is often a combination of castor gland secretions, anal gland secretions, and urine.
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“I tell them, ‘Oh, but it’s beavers it smells really good.'”Ĭastoreum is a chemical compound that mostly comes from a beaver’s castor sacs, which are located between the pelvis and the base of the tail. “I lift up the animal’s tail,” said Joanne Crawford, a wildlife ecologist at Southern Illinois University, “and I’m like, ‘Get down there, and stick your nose near its bum.'” Food and Drug Administration lists castoreum as a “generally regarded as safe” additive, and manufacturers have been using it extensively in perfumes and foods for at least 80 years, according to a 2007 study in the International Journal of Toxicology. Just in time for holiday cookie season, we’ve discovered that the vanilla flavoring in your baked goods and candy could come from the anal excretions of beavers.īeaver butts secrete a goo called castoreum, which the animals use to mark their territory.