Horsemeat Crossword

I saw a story today about the horsemeat scandal investigation maybe being canned (and then sold as ‘meatballs’ in Aldi) and it reminded me that I never got round to blogging my crossword themed around the same incident. So here it is.

Grid entries are up to 34% horse. Solvers must trace the movements of the horse and hence work out the best horse to talk to.

Across
7. Horsemeat, say, in true ITV broadcast (9)
8. Managers covered in ground salt? Only a fool does this to a dead horse. (8)
9. University program to find modern type of string (7)
11. Blimey, part of horse found in odd wrap! (4)
14. Note East Birmingham material (7)
15. Cut of ‘beef’ served in fire (7)
16. Exposes nag innards found in chocolates (7)
17. Nag makes wish in part of Scotland (8)
19. State birds make angry faces (6)
24. Magicians provide fake half-answer (7)
27. Lincoln’s underwear found in cut of meat (8)
28. Absurd moron diet — if only the abatoirs had been this. (9)

Down
1. Sinful, she became altrustic (9)
2. First ash confused sea creature (8)
3. Fifty in a billion lattices for the King (9)
4. Eat lady up (4)
5. Old boys’ Aunt’s second horse is found here (4)
6. Telepaths define lightspeed in bad physics (8)
8. Wizard Oil inventor lives within Oldham Line (6)
10. Mischevious, thrice beheaded 1 (6)
12. Repeat a profit (5)
13. Encrypts letter with programs (7)
15. Equations suggest milk has drug added (8)
18. Robes for headless 19 (5)
20. Meat ground up with sling? It’s what sausages are made of (9)
21. Suspect fish finger substitutes — they help the farm make money (8)
22. Vulgar and hurried around loud one (7)
23. Programmers hold key for old men (7)
25. Fake leather? (6)
26. Squatting after zero gin drunk (7)

Alternatively, a nicely formatted PDF version (whence I nicked the grid image) is available from Aperiodical.