Swedish furniture retailer Ikea has pulled nearly 18,000 elk meat lasagnes from sale after trace amounts of pork meat were found.

The company released a statement Thursday, which read in part:

"The presence of pork meat has been found in one production batch of LASAGNE ÄLG (Lasagne with elk meat). We take this very seriously and on Friday 22nd March a sales stop was issued, while we looked into this further. The product is sold in the IKEA Swedish Food Market in some European countries."

The European elk is known in north America as a moose.

Swedish news site The Local, citing Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet (SvD), reported an estimated 10,000 tons of lasagne stored in Ikea's central warehouse and at its department stores have also been blocked for sale.

READ MORE: IKEA Food Recalls Should Inspire Alternate Ways To Sell Food

Belgium authorities discovered the contamination in late March when a batch of the lasagnas with the expiry date January 2014 were found to contain more than 1 percent pork, which is the amount alloted for meat contamination.

IKEA store in Vantaa, Finland in Europe (Yero/Wikimedia Commons).

According to the BBC, the contamination was re-confirmed Friday. In a statement, Ikea said the exact contamination was 1.4 percent. The pork meat does not pose any health risks.

According to Ikea, the elk meat lasagnes are sold in the Swedish Food Market in the following European countries: Hungary, Ireland, Finland, Poland, Austria, Portugal, Norway, Belgium, Great Britain, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Spain, Slovakia, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, France and Sweden.

GlobalPost reported the contamination took place at Dafgaard, the same company that produces the Ikea meatballs that were pulled after tests showed they contained horsemeat earlier this year.

READ MORE: IKEA Meat Balls Contained Horse Meat

"They had been grinding a mix of pork and beef in the morning and elk meat in the afternoon,” company spokeswoman Josefin Thorell said.

"We've reviewed these routines together with Dafgaard so this is no longer being done. They now have separate facilities for different types of production."

According to The Local, Ikea has not yet decided what to do with the thousands of tons of elk meat, but one possibility is to simply re-label the product to show it contains pork.

RELATED CONTENT

CARTOON: IKEA Food Recall

Whole Foods, Trader Joe's Say No To Genetically Engineered Salmon

The Labeling Lowdown

Reach Executive Producer Vicki Chen here; follow her on Twitter here.