An independent review is set to be carried out into the Food Standards Agency's response to the horse meat scandal.
The review board, headed by Professor Pat Troop will have unrestricted access to all relevant documents held by the body.
The move follows criticism of the FSA's handling of the horse meat scandal with Labour's shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh branding the FSA 'unfit for purpose'.
Shadow Environment Secretary Mary Creagh branded the Food Safety Authority 'unfit for purpose' following the scandal
The findings of the review will be submitted to the Food Standards Agency in June for publication.
The project will feed into a larger Government review of the scandal which forced supermarkets including Tesco, Asda and Waitrose to clear their shelves.
The news comes just days after Dutch authorities announced they would recall 50,000 tons of meat sold as beef across Europe that may contain horse meat.
The FSA later confirmed that the meat did come to factories supplying supermarkets in the UK.
It is believed that the much of the suspected horse meat originated in countries such as Romania before being packaged elsewhere in Europe and sold on as ready meals in the UK.
Industry experts claim that the suspect meat came from Abattoirs in countries such as Romania
Ms Creagh said: 'The Government's fragmentation of the FSA in 2010 has left our food regulatory system unfit for purpose.
'The FSA knew that the Irish were testing for horse meat last November, yet did nothing until positive results came back. The FSA also needs to explain why 14 horses that tested positive for bute entered the human food chain before the FSA issued a recall notice.'
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Meanwhile Co-op, Asda, Sainsburys and Waitrose also also suffered thanks to the fallout from the scandal which was first unearthed by Irish food safety chiefs.
Professor Troop previously served as chief executive of the Health Protection Agency for five years and deputy chief medical officer at the Department of Health between 1999 and 2003.
Europe's horsemeat scandal erupted in January, when testing in Ireland revealed that some beef products also contained equine DNA, and the problems then spread across the continent.
The scandal ensnared numerous well-known brands, prompting product withdrawals, consumer concerns and government investigations into the region's complex food-processing chains.
In the Commons last month, Environment Secretary Owen Paterson described the adulteration of food products with horsemeat as a 'criminal conspiracy which covers 23 countries'.