Horsemeat Recipe Searches Jump in Canada

Mar 04, 2013

Google Trends Finds Canadians Interested in Horsemeat Recipes

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?

Video: Evolution of Beef Cattle Farming

The Clear Conversations podcast took to the road for a special episode recorded in Nashville during CattleCon, bringing listeners straight into the heart of the cattle industry. Host Tracy Sellers welcomed rancher Steve Wooten of Beatty Canyon Ranch in Colorado for a wide-ranging discussion that blended family history and sustainability, particularly as it relates to the future of beef production.

Sustainability emerged as a central theme of the conversation, a word that Wooten acknowledges can mean very different things depending on who you ask. For him, sustainability starts with the soil. Healthy soil produces healthy grass, which supports efficient cattle capable of producing year after year with minimal external inputs. It’s an approach that equally considers vegetation, animal efficiency, and long-term profitability.

That philosophy aligned naturally with Wooten’s involvement in the U.S. Roundtable for Sustainable Beef, where he served as a representative for the Colorado Cattlemen’s Association. The roundtable brings together the entire beef supply chain—from producers to retailers—along with universities, NGOs, and allied industries. Its goal is not regulation, Wooten emphasized, but collaboration, shared learning, and continuous improvement.