Irish customers have some serious beef with the country’s leading supermarket chains tonight, as reports confirm the presence of horse meat in some beef burger products on Irish shelves.

Own-brand burgers on sale in Tesco, Dunnes Stores, Lidl, Aldi and Iceland were all found to contain horse meat, and The Food Safety Authority of Ireland will now carry out a major investigation into the findings.

The FSAI analysed 27 beef burger products in total, and found 10 of the 27 products tested positive for horse DNA, while 85% testing positive for pig DNA.

The meat came from two processing plants in Ireland, Liffey Meats and Silvercrest Foods, as well as the Dalepak Hambleton plant in the UK. 

In one Tesco sample, for their Everyday Value Beef Burgers, horse meat accounted for an astonishing 29% of the burger. 

The Tesco Everyday Value Burgers as listed on their website this evening

The FSAI said that the findings do not pose a risk to public health, but that it does raise concerns about the traceability of meat ingredients. Professor Alan Reilly, chief executive of the FSAI, said: "Whilst there is a plausible explanation for the presence of pig DNA in these products due to the fact that meat from different animals is processed in the same meat plants, there is no clear explanation at this time for the presence of horse DNA in products emanating from meat plants that do not use horse meat in their production process… In Ireland, it is not in our culture to eat horse meat and therefore, we do not expect to find it in a burger."

The retailers in question have said they are now removing all implicated batches of burgers. 

Minister for Agriculture Simon Coveney has said that it looks as though the source of the horsemeat came from additives which had been mostly imported from abroad, and added to beef to bulk up cheaper burgers at the low end of the market. 

Speaking to Irish famers today the Minister said he would ‘make damn sure’ it never happens again.