Celebrity Chef Gordon Ramsay is facing backlash on TikTok from some users after posting a video in which he appeared to select a lamb to slaughter for a meal.
On Thursday, Ramsay posted a video of himself climbing into a pen of roughly ten pristine, white lamb. In the video, Ramsay rubbed his hands together while repeatedly saying “yummy.”
“I’m going to eat you,” the chef said to the group of lamb.
Then, he asked, “Which one’s going in the oven first?” He selected a sheep, pointing and saying: “You.”
Ramsay, 55, then jumped into the pen, startling some of the sheep.
The chef and restauranteur, clarified later that “No animals were cooked in the making of this video,” according to Insider, which first reported on the backlash.
Ramsay captioned the video “The Lamb sauce was still not found in the making of this video…….” — a reference to a 2006 meme, derived from a scene on his show “Hell’s Kitchen,” in which he asked a contestant for lamb sauce.
The video had nearly a million likes and almost 9 million views as of Sunday.
While some appeared to find humor in the bit, others were upset about the video and the way Ramsay appeared to taunt the animal headed for slaughter.
“What a classless, out-of-touch and heartless way to treat another sentient being,” one person wrote in a duet video.
Another person accused Ramsay of “animal abuse.”
“Do you think that grown men should be teaching children on TikTok that animal abuse is funny,” the person wrote in their response.
One user called out not only Ramsay, but those making jokes about the video in his comment section.
“Those are babies. Literal babies,” the person said in the duet. “This is not normal behavior … it’s not funny. it’s not entertaining and if you think animals don’t understand us, look how scared they are when he gets in the pen.”
Representatives for Ramsay did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Ramsay, already a celebrity in his own right, has become a TikTok star as well, with more than 33.5 million followers on the platform. He’s gained traction on the app posting reactions to other users’ cooking videos, along with posting his own content.