The Food Safety Authority of Ireland (FSAI) failed to give its British counterparts proper notice of the discovery of horse meat in burgers, the chairman of the UK’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) has told a House of Commons inquiry.

The British were told on January 14th – a day before the public announcement – that horse DNA had been found in a number of samples taken from two plants controlled by Larry Goodman’s ABP group in Ireland and in Yorkshire.

“One of the things is that they didn’t tell us until the day before they announced it yet weeks before they must have known what they were finding but they didn’t tell us,” Lord Rooker told MPs.

Tesco group technical director Tim Smith, whose company yesterday ended its frozen burger contract with Silvercrest, said the Irish side believed the horse meat contamination dated back more than six months.

“I have had the benefit of conversations with the Minister of Agriculture in Ireland [Simon Coveney] and the FSAI and both of them have said – in a conversational way, rather than an evidential way – that they believe it started in May 2012,” he told MPs.

*popcorn*