Burger King has stopped sourcing burgers from the Irish supplier at the centre of the horsemeat contamination scandal.

The fast-food giant said it had switched to an alternative supplier to ABP's Silvercrest plant for its British and Irish restaurants as a "voluntary and precautionary measure".

The ABP Food Group stopped work at its Silvercrest plant in Co Monaghan, Ireland, after new tests last week revealed contamination in frozen burgers.

Tests had already shown Silvercrest Foods and another of the company's subsidiaries, Dalepak Hambleton in Yorkshire, supplied beefburgers with traces of equine DNA to supermarkets.

However, ABP has insisted meat for Burger King was stored and processed separately and said there was no evidence products for the fast-food giant had been contaminated.

Burger King said in a statement: "While this is not a food safety issue according to findings from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, upon learning of these allegations, we immediately launched an independent investigation that is currently ongoing.

"As a precaution, this past weekend we decided to replace all Silvercrest products in the UK and Ireland with products from another approved Burger King supplier."

Tesco took out adverts in a number of newspapers apologising for selling the contaminated beefburgers, and Aldi, Lidl and Iceland also withdrew burgers from sale after they were found to contain horsemeat.