The Labour Party spokeswoman on agriculture and food, Ms Mary Upton TD, has called for more intensive testing of imported and home-produced food for banned substances.
Her call came as investigations continued in Northern Ireland into how contaminated organic chicken had entered the food chain.
The chicken was found to have contained traces of nitrofurans which are banned medicines because they are both carcinogenic and genotoxic. They are antibiotics.
However, the Food Safety Authority of Ireland, which issued the warning, said that at the levels detected an increase in cancer risk was likely to be small and there was no immediate danger to health.
Notices went up in Tesco, Superquinn and Dunnes Stores across the State yesterday seeking the return of any organic chicken supplied by the Moy Park company in Northern Ireland.
In Tesco, the Moy Park free range organic chicken bore the "best before" dates October 10th, 11th and 12th.
In Superquinn the expiry dates on the product were October 8th, 11th and 12th.
In Dunnes Stores the expiry dates were October 8th, 10th and 12th.
Both Tesco and Superquinn said it was likely that the chicken supplied to their stores had already been eaten, but they would replace any of the batch that had been placed in a freezer.
Superquinn said it thought it had sold about 200 of the chickens from the batch, and Tesco said it was unsure but thought only small amounts of the batch had been sold through its outlets.
Dunnes Stores did not give any answers to queries.
A spokesman for Moy Park, Mr Garth Jones, said that about 20,000 chickens were in the batch under investigation.
The company estimated that 20 per cent of the batch was sold into the Republic, but not all of that was organically produced.
The investigation, he said, was now focused on one of the 200 farmer suppliers to the plant.
"We are looking at all aspects of the production system," he said.
"We are looking at the feed we supply, the feed on the farm and even materials used to clean out the houses between production cycles."
He said the company was very shocked by the discovery of the banned material in its product.
Ms Upton called on the Minister for Agriculture and Food, Ms Coughlan, to reassure consumers about food safety by increasing tests on imported and home-produced food.