As news emerged that horse meat had been found in Irish burgers, it was not long until the international press picked up on the story.
The BBC website led with a story on its news magazine section asking: “Why are the British so revolted by horse meat?”
The Financial Times website carried the story under “Supermarkets withdraw contaminated burger.”
The LA Times used the story on the Daily Dish section of the site with the headline: “Food FYI: Horse meat found in burgers sold in Ireland,UK”.
It said: “A disturbing discovery has led some consumers to wonder ‘Where’s the beef?’ in their supermarket burgers.”
It asked its online readers whether it was an “isolated incident or more common than we think – rare or overdone?”
The New Zealand Herald featured the story and said that New Zealand had its own horse meat scandal in 2009, when Food Safety New Zealand took action against Tuakau Pet Food Abbatoir for illegally selling horse meat to Aucklanders.
Manufactured for pets, the horse meat products were being sold in south Auckland markets.
The sale of unsafe meat in New Zealand comes with a penalty of $500,000.
The Guardian featured the story on its Shortcuts Blog which takes a “sideways look at the news” by featuring a list of the best and worst horse burger puns and jokes on Twitter.
Tweets included – “Those Aldi Burgers were nice but I prefer my Lidl Pony” and “Two Tesco burgers please, hold the dressage”.
The story was also on Bloomberg, CNN, Sky News, the Washington Post, Fox News, CNBC,ABC, CNN, the Herald Sun, the Daily Mail, the Telegraph, the Huffington Post UK and the New York Times.