Disgust as racehorse killed and served in soup with microchip found by customer
Outrage has been sparked after it was discovered that a retired racehorse was served to unwitting customers in a soup.
The four-year-old racehorse, named Smart Latch, has claimed three victories in races before being forced to retire through injury, with its owner claiming to have donated it to a racing club.
However, it was secretly sold and slaughtered, before its true identity was discovered when its microchip was found in the soup as part of a traditional Turkish dish.
A local resident almost chowed down on the peculiar object when it was served into his portion of kavurma last month whilst eating at a soup kitchen in the Mersin province.
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Investigators were alerted and the microchip was quickly identified as belonging to Smart Latch, which made it fairly easy for them to rule that the meat being served was horse meat - something which is illegal in Turkey.
After it was examined on 4 February, the soup kitchen was ordered to destroy 213 kilograms of kavurma produced at the soup kitchen for that day and the day before.
Racehorses in particular are protected or re-homed in Turkey and naturally there has been outrage after the truth came out, with the ministry confirming that the Mersin municipality soup kitchen had been 'added to the list of unsafe products after testing showed it contained meat from a single-hoofed animal'.
Turkish newspaper the Avrupa Gazette reports the soup kitchen insists the meat was sourced in accordance with the proper regulations.
The owner of the horse, Suat Topcu, suggested that he was in 'distress' after the news came out.
In a statement shared to local media, he said: "We want an investigation to be opened. Hopefully, justice will prevail and those responsible will be punished."
He added that he had wanted Smart Latch to be a breeding horse after it was injured in a race, but it turned out the horse's 'physiological problems' meant this couldn't happen.
Instead, he donated the horse to a riding club.
He continued: "We made such a mistake. But a permanent solution needs to be found for horses that are withdrawn from racing.
"While trying to do good, we became the cause of harm."
Topcu has reportedly been fined 132,000 Turkish lira (£2,260) for not formally reporting the donation, claiming that he didn't know what had happened to the horse until he was contacted by the agriculture ministry.
He said: "The fine is not important, what's important is finding those who committed this cruelty.
"Neither I nor any other horse owner or trainer in this community has ever been associated with such an issue before."
The horse was last recorded racing in Adana on 14 October 2025, when it reportedly suffered a broken leg during the event, having won three races in its career, earning a total of TRY 1,125,000 (£19,200) in prize money.
According to its owner, Suat Topcu, the horse had later been handed over free of charge to be transferred to riding clubs after its racing career ended.
Officials said an investigation is continuing to determine how the animal was slaughtered and how its meat entered the municipal food supply chain.
Investigators currently suspect that the English thoroughbred horse had been taken straight to the slaughterhouse and falsely labelled as beef.
Here in the UK, we haven't seen anything like this widely reported since the 2013 horse meat scandal, where traces of the animal was found in a wide range of products in one of the biggest food fraud cases in history.
James Moorhouse