Ireland is at the centre of a major international investigation into how horsemeat unfit for human consumption entered the food chain. The Irish strand of the European probe is being led by the National Bureau of Criminal Investigation (NBCI), An Garda Síochána’s serious crimes squad. Race horses or sports horses from Ireland, banned from the food chain because of the medications they received during their careers, ended up in abattoirs in Europe, including Belgium, where horsemeat was being processed for human consumption.The racing backgrounds of the horses were concealed via systematic fraud using fake horse passports and duplicated and otherwise manipulated microchips. Once a horse could be smuggled into the food chain, they secured a price of up to €1,500 for each animal at slaughter.Gardaí are trying to determine how a very large number of horses were transported from Ireland to mainland Europe. One route favoured, it is understood, was taking the animals via ferry from Ireland to France, before many of the animals were moved to Belgium and the Netherlands.The international probe has echoes of the 2013 horsemeat scandal in Ireland, when it was discovered food labelled as beef, and being sold in millions of supermarkets products, was horsemeat. It had been smuggled into the products via widespread fraud, with Irish suppliers at the centre of the scandal.Though police forces, as well as food and animal welfare agencies from four European countries are involved in the new international probe, The Irish Times understands most of the horses came from Ireland.“The criminal network is suspected of forging horse passports and manipulating microchips to grant the animals new identities, obscuring their true background and eligibility for human consumption,” the Garda said.A total of 24 searches, involving 200 personnel, were carried out on Tuesday and Wednesday. In a major series of raids coordinated by Europol, six of the searches were in Ireland, seven were in both France and the Netherlands, and four took place in Belgium. In Ireland, the searches took place in Galway, Kilkenny, Tipperary, Kildare, Dublin and Donegal. The gardaí involved were accompanied by personnel from the Department of Agriculture investigations division, Dutch police officers and Europol personnel.The presence in Ireland of agents and officers from foreign police forces and other international law-enforcement agencies is usually reserved for international inquiries into large-scale and serious organised crime. Europol officers were deployed to the Irish and Belgian searches only, as Ireland was the main source country for the horses and Belgium the location where the unfit horsemeat was entering the food chain. Some of the horses given false identities are believed to have been resold, rather than slaughtered.The identities of about 1,000 horses were checked during the searches in the four countries, while phones and computers were seized, as was at least €100,000 in cash.In Belgium, three suspects were arrested and two remained in custody on Thursday night. Investigators believe a horse dealer from East Flanders, Belgium, played a key role in concealing the true identity of sports horses so they could be sold for human consumption.