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Supermarkets such as Tesco's may have been selling horse burgers for years
London - Discoveries so far of horsemeat in products sold as beef are likely to be the "tip of the iceberg", a parliamentary report into the scandal said on Thursday.
"The scale of contamination emerging in the meat supply chain is breathtaking," said Anne McIntosh, a legislator who chairs the cross-party Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which published the report. "More revelations will doubtless come to light in the UK and across the European Union."
Growing revelations about the use of horsemeat in products labelled beef have raised questions about the safety of the European food supply chain and prompted governments to send out a European Union (EU)-wide alert.
The EU's health chief said on Wednesday all companies that have handled falsely-labelled horsemeat were under suspicion, adding that the European Commission was considering strengthening EU rules on product labelling.
The British parliamentary report concluded there were strong signs horsemeat had been intentionally substituted for beef.
"British consumers have been cynically and systematically duped in pursuit of profit by elements within the food industry," it said.
The issue first came to light on January 15 when routine tests by Irish authorities discovered horsemeat in beef burgers made by firms in Ireland and Britain and sold in supermarket chains including Tesco, Britain's biggest retailer.
Concern grew last week when the British unit of frozen foods group Findus began recalling its beef lasagne on advice from its French supplier, Comigel, after tests showed concentrations of horsemeat ranging from 60 to 100 percent.
