The Food Standards Agency (FSA) is preparing to test all beef products being sold in UK supermarkets for the presence of horse and other animals, the Guardian has learned.

The watchdog is expected to announce that it will make its own checks on meat shortly, following revelations from the Food Safety Authority of Ireland earlier this week that it had found significant contamination and adulteration of beefburgers with horse and pig in supplies that had been sold not just in Ireland but also in the UK.

The FSA held emergency meetings with supermarket groups on Wednesday and came under political pressure to establish how far the British food chain had been compromised.

Tesco, whose frozen value beefburgers were found to be 29% horse, cleared its shelves of beef products and issued full-page apologies to its customers in the media. Asda and the Co-op followed suit by withdrawing some of their beef products which originated from the same Irish-based meat processing giant ABP which had supplied Tesco with the adulterated beefburgers.

Checks are still being made on other suppliers whose products were found to contain pig or horse DNA by the Irish who also supply other leading supermarket groups in the UK.

The move came as David Heath, the food and environment minister, said the presence of horsemeat was probably the result of criminality.

But he told Labour's environment spokeswoman, Mary Creagh, who had asked an urgent question on the issue on Thursday: "It is very important neither you, nor anyone else in this house, talks down the British food industry at a time when the standards in that industry are of a very high level."