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Andrew Rhodes, FSA: "We'll keep pursuing this until there is nothing left to find"
The probe into allegations of horsemeat mislabelling will be "relentless", the Food Standards Agency (FSA) has said.
It comes after a slaughterhouse in Todmorden, West Yorkshire and a meat firm near Aberystwyth were raided by FSA officials supported by police.
FSA director of operations Andrew Rhodes told the BBC that the agency's investigations would continue until "there was nothing left to find".
The FSA suspended operations at both raided premises and seized paperwork.
'No risk'The horsemeat scandal began last month when Irish authorities discovered horsemeat in some burgers stocked by a number of UK supermarket chains.
Horsemeat has also been found in branded and supermarket-own ready meals, including lasagne and spaghetti bolognese.
The crisis has spread across Europe as details of the convoluted supply chain in the meat industry emerged.
The FSA in the UK has ordered food businesses to carry out tests on all processed beef products and the first results are expected on Friday. They are testing for the presence of horsemeat and pork.
End Quote Dafydd Raw Rees Farmbox MeatsThere is nothing we have done here which is not totally permissible"
The FSA also ordered an audit of all horse-producing abattoirs in the UK.
Mr Rhodes told the BBC the raids on Tuesday were a result of those investigations, and his officers had returned to the premises on Wednesday morning.
"What we found was a quantity of horsemeat sent to a factory in west Wales and used in beef products when it shouldn't have been," he said.
What is not known is whether it was deliberate or a mistake, he said.
"We've been very relentless in this," he added. "We'll continue following it through until there is nothing left to find."
Mr Rhodes said consumers had every right to expect a product to be exactly what it said on the label, but no evidence of a food safety risk had been found so far.
The FSA regularly tested a broad change of facilities, he added, and retailers and manufacturers were now being asked to routinely send their test results to the agency for assessment.
'Never knowingly'
The raided premises were Peter Boddy Licensed Slaughterhouse, in Todmorden, West Yorkshire, and Farmbox Meats Ltd, of Llandre near Aberystwyth.
The West Yorkshire plant was thought to have supplied horse carcasses to the Aberystwyth firm, which were then allegedly sold on as beef for kebabs and burgers.
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Mr Boddy said he was co-operating with the FSA and officials were "welcome to visit" his premises whenever they wanted.
Dafydd Raw Rees, of Farmbox Meats, said the firm was licensed to deal with horses and it had been cutting horsemeat, from the Irish Republic, for the last three weeks.
"As far as I am concerned I know nothing about the plant in West Yorkshire. I have never knowingly processed horsemeat until three weeks ago," he said.
"There is nothing we have done here which is not totally permissible."
Meanwhile, shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh has said she would not buy mince of any kind at the moment.
Asked if she had changed her eating habits, she told BBC 5 live: "Let's just say that I'm not very keen on mince at the moment, I think I know a bit too much now."
She said she would not buy mince in a ready meal or in a packet as a "precautionary principle".
Environment Secretary Owen Paterson will travel to Brussels on Wednesday for a meeting of European countries caught up in the horsemeat scandal.
Ministers from the Irish Republic, France, Romania, Luxembourg, Sweden and Poland will attend.
Mr Paterson has said it would be "totally unacceptable" if any UK business was "defrauding the public" by passing off horsemeat as beef.
The raids came as Mr Paterson met food retailers and suppliers to discuss plans for a new regime of quarterly testing of products.
In a separate development, Waitrose's Essential British Frozen Beef Meatballs has become the latest product to be withdrawn from UK supermarket shelves after pork was detected in two batches.
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