REYKJAVIK (AFP) - British rock legend Morrissey pulled out of plans for a concert in Iceland because the venue included a restaurant selling meat, his local promoter said Wednesday.

"We saw quickly that Harpa (concert hall in Reykjavik) would be ideal, but could not book it because there is a restaurant there. We let it be known and stopped further negotiations because he (Morrissey) would not play in a house that sold meat," promoter Ragnheidur Hanson told AFP.

"The thing is, this concert was never booked, we were just beginning to check if any venue would fit," she added.

The singer and militant vegetarian - who had a hit album called Meat Is Murder with his band The Smiths in the 1980s - criticised the concert venue in a comment to the online fanzine True To You.

"I love Iceland and I have waited a long time to return, but I shall leave the Harpa Concert Hall to their cannibalistic flesh-eating bloodlust," he told the fanzine.

The concert venue said there had been no discussions about a meat ban because plans for a Morrissey performance were dropped at an early stage.

"We would respect all wishes regarding the concert halls and backstage, but it would not occur to me to give orders to the restaurants," Harpa director Halldor Gudmundsson told AFP.

Morrissey caused a stir in another Nordic country in 2011 when he compared the massacre in Norway of 77 people by the right-wing extremist, Anders Behring Breivik to the fate of animals bred for fast-food companies.

"That is nothing compared to what happens in McDonald's and Kentucky Fried S**t every day," he said, two days after the killings.