Furniture retailer Ikea on Monday pulled some of its trademark Koettbullar meatballs off shelves in 14 countries, as the horse meat scandal gripping Europe for a month widened.
Spokeswoman Ylva Magnusson told dpa that one batch of frozen meatballs was questionable, after Czech authorities found horse DNA in the one-kilogram packages supplied by Swedish group Dafgard.
Ikea stores in Belgium, Britain, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Slovakia, Spain and Sweden were affected by the decision to halt the sale of the meatball batch, Magnusson said.
Ikea branches in Austria and Denmark also announced that they would preventively stop selling meatballs, even though their products did not stem from the batch suspected to contain horse meat.
A test on those meatballs - which normally contain beef and pork - has been sent to a lab in Germany, and Magnusson said that she hopes the result will be available this week. A Dafgard spokesman said his company was also conducting DNA tests of its own.
Meatballs from other batches would still be sold by the retail giant in the 14 directly affected countries, Magnusson said.
Czech authorities also said they found horse meat in beef burgers imported from Poland by another retail vendor.
Spanish Agriculture Minister Miguel Arias Canete said in Brussels that his country had discovered traces of horse meat in a cannelloni dish.
According to the EU, more than 15 European countries have found or have suspected that presumed beef products contained horse meat, in a scandal that has unsettled consumers and revealed complex and often opaque supply chains.
"It is frustrating to see new stories breaking almost on a daily basis, certainly on a weekly basis - new companies involved, big brands, big names that consumers trust," said Irish Agriculture
Minister Simon Coveney, whose country holds the EU's presidency.
"We're all anxious to get to the bottom of this and move on, and put mechanisms and measures in place to make sure it doesn't happen again," he added.
The EU has already recommended that ready meals labelled as containing beef be tested for horse meat in all of the bloc's 27 member states, with results to be published in April.
EU agriculture ministers also discussed the possibility of processed products having to feature information on the origin of their meat ingredients.
Germany, France, Austria and Finland are spearheading the push for such a measure, with support from Italy and Portugal, French Agriculture Minister Stephane Le Foll said.
"There is a growing movement in favour of this labelling of place of origin, in spite of the complexities of the issue," the EU's commissioner for consumer policy, Tonio Borg, said.
Le Foll said Paris and Berlin would draft a joint text in a bid to win over critics. Canete, for instance, argued against changing general EU rules because of the horse meat scandal, saying that the focus should instead be on punishing those responsible for fraud.
"Of course, it's not the labels which will resolve the fraud problems," Le Foll said. "But the further you go with origin requirements, the less space you leave for those who want to cheat
and the more confidence you give to consumers."
Austrian Agriculture Minister Nikolaus Berlakovich added: "All the scandals have greatly unsettled consumers. When you see that nowadays meat travels through half of Europe to arrive in a food product, consumers have a right to know where the meat comes from."
Borg said the European Commission will present a report on origin labels in a few months. Legislative proposals could then follow. Borg also urged EU countries to look at toughening penalties for labelling fraud.
The ministers' meeting was taking place one day after another food scandal broke out in Germany, involving eggs that are suspected to have been wrongly labelled as organic.
An investigation into the matter has been underway since 2011, according to German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner, who said it would be a "large-scale fraud" if the suspicions are confirmed.