A second meat processing plant in Ireland has tested positive for traces of horse meat.
The Department of Agriculture confirmed damaging findings of 75% equine DNA in raw ingredient at Rangeland Foods in Co Monaghan.
Just days after the ABP Food Group lost an estimated 45 million euro (£38m) in contracts over the deepening scandal, Irish police have been called in to aid inquiries.
A special investigation unit from the department has been tasked to get to the bottom of the controversy.
In a statement the department said production has been suspended at Rangeland, a frozen burger supplier established in 1892 with a turnover of 18m euro (£15m) and about 80 staff.
"The company has indicated that none of this product has entered the food chain," the department said.
Inquiries into whether Polish labelled product has been used in other meat processing plants in Ireland are ongoing.
Rangeland called in authorities last Thursday amid suspicions that Polish sourced meat may contain horse.
An Irish-based trader had imported the meat, the department said.
"The investigation is focusing on the full supply chain including the meat trader concerned and others who facilitated the purchase of the product and its transfer to users in Ireland," the department said.
The Rangeland results were released on the eve of a briefing Irish Agriculture Minister Simon Coveney is to give politicians in Dublin at a parliamentary committee on the wider horse meat controversy.
The meeting was arranged after the Silvercrest processing plant in Monaghan, part of the ABP group, was found to have supplied products contaminated with horse.
Irish authorities have been liaising with Polish officials over the source of the contamination.
"The investigation has shown that all implicated raw material ingredient is labelled as Polish product," the department said.
Aside from reputational damage to Ireland's 10 billion euro (£8.5bn) agri-food industry, the ABP Food Group, owned by Larry Goodman, has lost contracts with Tesco, Aldi, the Co-Operative Group and Burger King over the fiasco.
Mr Coveney will join Professor Alan Reilly, whose research at the Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) first exposed the contamination of processed beef burgers.
Controversy and concerns about traceability of food widened at the weekend when a company which supplied halal food found to contain traces of pork DNA was named by food distributor 3663 as McColgan Quality Foods Limited, a Northern Ireland-based company.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article