From ANIMAL PEOPLE, March 2013:

PARIS––At least 28 companies in 13 European nations plus
Hong Kong have been involved in marketing horsemeat as beef, French
government investigators assessed in mid-February 2013, predicting that
more alleged perpetrators would be exposed by ongoing investigations.
Entrepreneurs seeking to resume horse slaughter in the U.S. have
argued that they would market to an upscale clientele in nations
including Belgium, France, Italy, Switzerland, and Japan, who would
demand that horses were transported and killed humanely. But the
horsemeat-as-beef scandal has revealed just the opposite: by far the
greater portion of the European horsemeat trade involves the lowest
priced meat products, in which the ingredients are most easily
disguised, and about which consumers and regulators tend to ask the
fewest questions.

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