Horsemeat Recipe Searches Jump in Canada

Google Trends Finds Canadians Interested in Horsemeat Recipes

By Amanda Brodhagen, Farms.com

The largely European appetite for horsemeat has more recently perked the interest in Canadian consumers who appear to be interested in searching for horsemeat recipes online.

In the midst of the European horsemeat food scandal, that found a number of beef products contained traces of horsemeat, Canadian consumers who weren’t impacted by the scandal have turned to Google to search for horse recipes.

According to a Google Trends report released on Monday, Canadian Google searches for “horse recipes” spiked. The searches were mostly concentrated in Alberta and B.C.

While online searches have been trending upward since 2008, this month, it reached a record.

For the most part Canada exports the majority of its horsemeat to other countries such as Japan, France, Switzerland and Belgium.

Could this be signaling an emerging domestic market for horsemeat in Canada?