"Horse DNA has been found in some beef burgers being sold in UK and Irish supermarkets, the Republic of Ireland's food safety authority (FSAI) has said." [BBC]

  • brandonmwest

    To be fair, it may not be horsemeat; it could be horsespunk.

    • awjt

      Exactly.  Cows eat everything in their path, including some horseapple, deer pellets and whatever else is in the field. (If they’re even in a field, ever.)

  • http://twitter.com/hoffasaurusx Michael Hassall

    Surely that means they can charge more for them? Yes? No?

    • semiotix

      Neigh.

  • http://www.rjek.com/ Rob Kendrick

    But horse meat is delicious!

    • http://twitter.com/amordecosmos amordecosmos

      You should try unicorn meat.  Like horse meat, only a little more horny.

      • morcheeba

        ThinkGeek sells canned unicorn meat. An excellent source of sparkles.

  • Shinkuhadoken

    At least they found actual meat which more than I can say for what some fast food places serve on this side of the Atlantic.

  • Digilante

    I agree, horsemeat is fantastic – better than beef anyway, so what’s the complaint?

    • Jerril

      That’s my first reaction, but my second one was “What other unlabeled ingredients are there?”

      • TooGoodToCheck

        Yep.  That and “I bet that did not enter the food supply chain in a FDA (or local equivalent) approved manner”

  • http://blog.brenthousen.com Brent Housen

    Great, now I want a horse burger.

    • awjt

      “I’ll have the Double Seabiscuit with Mare cheese.  Medium.”

  • xzzy

    The taboo regarding horse meat mystifies me. Apparently it tastes just fine and is leaner than beef.. but you try to chow on a horseburger in America (and apparently the UK), you’re going to get some serious stinkeye.

    I guess because horses are pets now means they get immunity from the BBQ.

    • trentboyett

      It’s still cool in Quebec.  I lived in Montreal for a while and a good percentage of chain grocery stores carried it.  It’s altogether great lean meat.

    • annoyingmouse

      Every so often there are articles in the UK press shocked at the amount of horse meat exported out of the country.  I remember reading an article a couple of years ago about the number leaving the country that mentioned something about it being brought up in a shocked parliament too (I’m sure I remember reading an article on this very site but I can’t seem to find it so I must be imagining that).  I imagine it’s the same in the US.  Can’t see the same publications and politicians being shocked at society’s acceptable meats. 

    • Punchcard

      I grew up on 5-acres of “Horse Property” and was tasked with watering and feeding the horses morning and night 365 as well as mucking stalls building/repairing loads of fences over the weekend.

      If I could get it in the States, I would gladly pay to eat some horse.

    • UnderachievingSheep

      It’s very common in The Netherlands, sold at regular butchers alongside cow/pork/lamb, etc. It was a bit of a shock when I just moved here and I was grateful when my local butcher explained to me, in English, what I was getting when I asked for the Weekly Special (it’s common for butchers to have a weekly discounted cut and that particular week it was horse meat).

      • Antinous / Moderator

        I went with some friends for a New Year’s Eve dinner at a Chinese restaurant in SF many years ago. I decided to order the “game with braised leeks”. The waiter became mildly agitated and kept pointing at my friend’s very light blond hair and saying, “Like dog! Like cat!” over and over. I ordered it anyway, and we wrote down the character. When we finally found someone to translate it, it turned out to be golden weasel.

        • welcomeabored

          I’ve never eaten weasel… ahem… how was it?

          • Antinous / Moderator

            Delicious. Tender and flavorful.

          • http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

            Stay gold, Pony Boy.

        • Jonathan Roberts

          I once went out to a hotpot restaurant with a Chinese/Scottish couple I know, so we let the wife order, as she was Chinese. The donkey meat was delicious (even better than horse, I’d say), the silkworms were OK and the hotpot was pretty good (the soup had seahorse and trumpet fish), but we were a bit surprised at the end at how expensive it all was. Apparently bull penis is good for men and adds a lot to the cost of a meal like that. Still, it did encourage me to improve my Chinese enough to be able to read the more exotic menu items.

      • http://www.meneghello.net Marco Meneghello

        It’s the same here in Italy.

    • ImmutableMichael

      We tried horsemeat sashimi at at Korean restaurant in Shinjuku.  It was wonderful – like an equine Carpaccio but without any distracting dressing and the meat was tender and actually tasted like meat.

  • Daneel

    Neigh it ain’t so, Joe!

  • Charles-A Rovira

    Its a question of labeling, not meat. If they’d label it properly there would be no problem.

    Its better than the allegedly beef burgers we get at McDonut here in Jersey City, which consist mostly of bull shit and saw dust.Nothing wrong with horse meat. Some of the better steaks I’ve in Montréal (at “Geronimo” so it was a looong time ago,) were Mustang steaks. Free range buffalo meat is better though. Better for you too.

  • Svejk

    I want to see the updated TV adverts, ‘spin the wheel of fortune burgers’

  • Daneel

    I hate this life! The food is filthy! This huge sausage is very suspicious. If I didn’t know better, I’d say it was a horse’s wi–

  • http://profile.yahoo.com/MWNNAJTTXSXFUN4A6FLTKAT264 Michael

    I don’t know why they don’t add long pig as filler. Plenty of them to go around, most are spoiling too. What a waste.

    • http://stephan-zielinski.com/ Stephan Zielinski

      Even ignoring the prion issues, it’s still not a good idea from a food safety standpoint.  Humans are long-lived apex predators, so we bioconcentrate things like polychlorinated biphenyls and heavy metals.

    • oasisob1

      I’ve always argued that China could adopt a single solution for their two largest problems.

  • s2redux

    Just a simple shipping error; this stuff was meant to go to Cheval Roi outlets in France.

    • http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson

      My immediate reaction as well. “Looks like someone got a shipment of meat scraps from a French butchery”…

    • toyg

      Yeah, somebody got confused over the names, because of the metric system.

  • http://www.facebook.com/bazimmerman Brad Zimmerman

    Futurama, “Luck of the Fryrish”

    Vendor: “Get your piping hot horse burgers horse fries, horse cakes and shakes. We got tongue, straight from the horse’s mouth.”
    Leela: “Hmm.”
    Hermes: “It all sounds good.”
    Vendor: “All our horses are 100% horse-fed for that double-horse “juiced-in” goodness.”
    Leela: “I’ll have the cholesterol-free omelet with horse-beaters.”
    Vendor: “And you, Sir? How can I horse you?”
    Hermes: “I’ll have a horse Coke.”
    Vendor: “Horse Pepsi okay?”
    Hermes: “Nay.”

  • Jay Converse

    As long as it’s not GMO horsemeat.

  • Mark Creasy

    Well, as Pierre reminded us, all the food is poison.  http://i.imgur.com/cI4xh.png

  • Steve Baldwin

    Mmmm. Shergar burger.

  • http://twitter.com/digitalArtform Joseph Francis

    Oh, Wilbur.

    :(

  • hairfool

    Its a stable diet.

    • http://twitter.com/rvitelli Romeo Vitelli

      And anyone who says differently is a neighsayer.

      • http://www.aarongilliland.com/ Aaron Gilliland

        Listen, Jack; I’m nobody’s foal.  Cutting horse is a cinch, but you may need a hand if you’re not a cold blooded stud like me.  Sorry if that sounds tacky, but at night my posts can gait a bit lame.

        Mare Winningham.

  • TacoChuck

    Just to tack on to the comments about horse meat being good to eat: There is an argument to be made that allowing horse slaughter for meat reduces horse abuse and neglect cases. If people have a place they can take older or unwanted horses and get a few hundred bucks for them, they are less likely to just let them stand in paddocks in unhealthy conditions because people can’t or won’t take care of them properly. This of course assumes that the slaughter house will treat and kill the animals humanely.

    • dave moore

      But i don’t want stringy old horses….I want the tender delicious young ones!

      • TacoChuck

         I do not really think it is an either/or situation.You can have your foal cutlet and I’ll take my “Old Paint” burgers.

  • feetleet

    Pink slime?

  • http://thisisonlya.blogspot.com robcat2075

    My Fried Flicka.

    What is the source of these horses?  Are these worn-out racing horses?

  • http://daruiburns.tumblr.com/ Dlo Burns

    “Reports indicate the rest of the burgers were sent to a Brooklyn food truck and now have a 300% markup for ‘old world artisan-ness’”