Sounds like some very odd slaughtering that gets brain and stomach contents into the lungs.
The tuberculosis threat is the primary reason, from what I understand.
My German-born grandmother used to cook something called "calf lights" when we were kids. Basically, it was strips of meat swimming in a beige colored gravy. It had a decent flavor but the texture was kind of off-putting. I remember my brother and I also thought the name was pretty cool, until we found out it was made from lungs. Neither of us ate it again. It was just too weird and the flavor, while good, wasn't fantastic enough to draw us back to eating it again. Now it's just one of those "remember the time grandma made that" stories. Besides, I don't think you can even find it anywhere these days.
Strangely enough, other than that, there aren't many parts of an animal I won't eat. While I will eat tripe, I draw the line at sphincters, and I won't eat eyeballs, either (both just give me the heebie-jeebies
). But I've had brains, heart, liver, kidneys, tongue, and most other things, and it doesn't bother me.
On a trip to Paris a few years back, one of the most delicious things I ate was crépinette de veau, which is veal endocrine gland wrapped in caul fat and fried. Sounds offal (pun intended) but is very tasty, as long as you don't spend a lot of time thinking about it.
In Istanbul they have these interesting rest stops. You can fill up the tank, get something to eat, and do your praying in a mosque. The food in these places isn't your standard convenience store fare. It's more like a deli/buffet. Anyway, none of the people in our group spoke Turkish, so we would just kind of point at things we wanted. I had a wonderful dish that looked a lot like Louisiana dirty rice with tomatoes and yogurt plopped on the top. After I finished eating, I asked our Turkish bus driver what it was that I had. He didn't speak much English and had to look up the name in a Turkish-English dictionary. The best description he could come up with was "brain of small sheep with rice". Again, weird but good.