An MEP yesterday took the British food dispute with France into her own hands, taking 2 lb of British beef in a Union flag carrier bag into France.
Ms Elisabeth Lynne, a member of the Liberal group, got off a flight from London to Strasbourg, home to the European Parliament, ostentatiously carrying the bag of meat to protest against France's refusal to lift a ban on British beef.
"British beef is totally healthy and I hope every country adopts criteria as strict as ours," she told reporters after going through customs without any problem despite the "British Beef" label in bold letters on her bag.
Showing reporters her bag of rumpsteak, Ms Lynne said she planned to cook it and share it that evening with her nine colleagues from the Liberal group to celebrate the opening of the parliamentary session.
In Paris, the Agriculture Minister, Mr Jean Glavany, urged Britons to avoid "pouring oil on the fire" in the dispute between the two countries over France's refusal to lift the 31/2-year ban on British beef. "It's only too easy to refuel anti-French feeling in England" or to whip up anti-British sentiment in France, he said.
In London, a senior government scientific adviser said there was "undoubtedly" a risk that French meat could be contaminated. Prof Philip Thomas became the latest scientist to voice his concern following an EU report which disclosed French farmers had been feeding their livestock with foodstuffs produced from animal and human sewage.
Prof Thomas said the French actions clearly breached EU law and could be a health risk.
"The risk may be relatively small but the risk is undoubtedly there," he told BBC radio. "You don't have to have a scientific interpretation to know that it is not good risk management to be putting materials contaminated by human faeces back into the food chain."
He said that under French law, farmers were still allowed to feed pigs and poultry with feed produced from animal sewage, although it had been banned from cattle and sheep.
The Agriculture Minister, Mr Nick Brown - who was due to discuss the growing crisis with the European Food Commissioner, Mr David Byrne, - insisted there were no scientific grounds for a ban at present. "I'm going to abide by the scientific advice that comes to government collectively, and that advice clearly says that there is no case for imposing a ban on French live stock products on health or hygiene grounds," he said.
He warned that imposing a unilateral British ban would be illegal under EU law and would undermine his government's efforts to get the French ban on British beef lifted.
"We are legally in the right on the export of our own beef. We are legally in the right on the question of the sewage sludge . . . It would be very foolish for us as a country to step outside the law and embark upon the disasters we got in the John Major years."