Polish food investigators have found no evidence linking their meat supply to that of Irish claims that Poland was the source of horsemeat that ended up in Irish and British burgers.
Tensions have emerged in recent days between the two countries, both major meat producers whose industries could be damaged by the horseburger scandal.
Jaroslaw Naze, deputy head of Poland's General Veterinary Inspectorate, said Ireland needed to hand over more documentary evidence, including of labels on the suspected meat supplies, so that Polish officials can complete their own investigation, according to the Associated Press.
The report goes on to say that Poland has carried out DNA testing at a national laboratory in Pulawy, in southeastern Poland, on 14 meat samples taken from a cold storage unit. Naze described the laboratory as one of the biggest and most modern in Europe.
The Food Safety Authority of Ireland emphasized that the problem was a matter of honest labeling, not safety, and must involve fraud by a producer or supplier somewhere along the seven-nation journey by truck from Poland to Ireland.
The reputational damage to Ireland threatens to erode international confidence in the country's top agricultural product, beef, a business worth $2.5 billion a year to this country of 4.6 million.
Meanwhile, Alan Reilly, chief executive of the Food Safety Authority, said that Ireland was dealing with a certain case of fraud, not an accident.
"We're no longer talking about trace amounts of horse DNA in product. We're talking about horsemeat. Somebody, someplace, is drip-feeding horsemeat into the burger manufacturing industry. We don't know yet exactly where this is happening. All the documentary checks that we have on these shipments show that they have come from Poland," Reilly said.
