WE MAKE A lot of money racing horses in Ireland, and we certainly enjoy admiring them, but one thing is clear: not all of us want to eat them.
And if people do, they want to make the decision for themselves.
So when the news broke earlier this week that burgers for sale in Irish and UK supermarkets contained not just beef, but horse and pig DNA, the reaction was one of puzzlement and, in many cases, disgust, swiftly followed by an overpowering need to drop a horse pun into every sentence.
Beyond the visceral reaction that some experienced after realising they may have consumed horse when they certainly didn’t want to, there were the issues around traceability and what exactly is in that value burger you find in a supermarket freezer.
The news spread (or should that be raced? – sorry) beyond Ireland and the UK as quickly as the Shergar jokes piled up on Twitter, with international publications taking no small bit of entertainment out of Ireland’s horsey predicament.
Here is how the world reacted to the news about Ireland’s horse inside its burgers:
Flipped
According to Newser, ‘queasy customers’ ‘flipped’ when they found out the news:
Where’s Shergar?
The Sun joined approximately 2,687,455 other people in cracking a Shergar joke about the burgers:
Horse vs Puppy
The Detroit Free Press reported our story – but we had to share the headline with a drunk puppy:
Neigh, not another pun
Worldcrunch saw the lighter side of the situation, making use of puns, gifs AND photobombing in its report:
Oh Hell No!
“Oh Hell No!” exclaimed GlobalGrind about our equine dilemma (with a big vat of meat thrown in for good measure):
‘Get over yourself, Western Europe’
Gawker used the example of our treasured spice burgers to tell the tale, but its readers were tough on our sensitive palates:
Ouch.
Delicacy or friend?
The National Post got down to the nitty-gritty, wondering “who is afraid of a little horse meat?“:
New Zealand recalls its own horse meat scandal
Our predicament reminded New Zealand Herald of the time it had its own horse meat scandal:
Furious
The Saudi Gazette described us as ‘furious’ over the furore:
The Horse
What did The Horse think of all of this? Well, it wasn’t as upset as you might imagine, being quite matter-of-fact about about whole thing:
Horse vs Cow
Finally, the Telegraph’s features writer Harry Wallop investigated the murky world of pure horse meat, and even tried some for himself (veggies, look away now):
(telegraphTV/YouTube)