You Can Blame Global Warming For Burger King's Zesty Sauce Shortage

There is a global horseradish shortage on, but nobody seemed to care until Burger King started running out of its Zesty Onion Ring Dipping Sauce. Now people care a lot, Business Insider reports. They have taken to Twitter to voice their displeasure. They have vowed not to return to BK again until the zesty sauce is back in stock. But they are out of luck. Which makes them even more unhappy. BK's supplier, Restaurant Services Inc., confirmed that there there will be no more sauce until the spring horseradish harvest in April. (Passover can go on as planned, though!)

You can blame climate change for the shortage. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported earlier this month that an early snowfall made it impossible to harvest about half the crop at Huntsinger Farms near Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which supplies Silver Spring Foods, the nation's leading provider of horseradish. Since horseradish is a hardy tuber, none of the crop died, but between 1.5 and 2 million pounds will remain in the ground until the next harvest in early spring, after the thaw. Silver Spring was already behind in planting because of a low harvest in 2018 and three seasons of unexpectedly cold, wet weather. This may be a harbinger of change in the horseradish industry.

"We think these are new weather patterns that will not go away," Silver Spring's president, Eric Rygg, told the Journal Sentinel. "We're looking at speed as a way to mitigate this. When the weather is good we need to harvest faster."