The outrage was very similar when a second meat scandal occurred in Sweden when fair trade marked high quality beef was substituted with a imported cheap alternative. No one likes being made a fool and paying 2-3 times the actually value, and different quality of meat has different amount of nutrition, water content, risk of human transferable diseases, toxics and antibiotic/environmental footprint. Most people also have a strong dislike of fraud, and do not like the knowledge that their money got into the hands of criminals.

This is also unfortunately a rampant problem in seafood: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/03/bait-and...

Horse meat isn't consumed in Britain either, which is where the the mislabeled meats were discovered. I see what you're saying about the scandal though, that does seem to me like a reason to be upset.

The scandal was all over Europe, even in countries where horse meat is consumed. Problem one was substituting horse meat for beef or w/e (kind of a dick move). Problem two was using horse meat unfit for human consumption spiked with all sorts of veterinarian antibiotics (actually dangerous).