A crucial meeting of the European Union's Scientific Steering Committee will rule tomorrow on whether British beef is safe. The Anglo-French beef dispute stepped up a gear and spread to the French port of Calais yesterday.
The committee will consider a report prepared by a 16-member group of EU experts on BSE, which it is understood has confirmed that there is no new evidence to support the French ban and that the conditions for exporting British beef under the Date-Based Export Scheme are safe.
If the findings of the working group are accepted by the committee, the European food safety Commissioner, Mr David Byrne, has promised legal action against France "within days" to lift the ban on British beef imports.
Meanwhile, the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, spoke to his French counterpart, Mr Lionel Jospin, by telephone yesterday and again demanded that France lift the ban on beef imports.
Mr Blair's personal intervention came shortly before the British government's advisory committee on animal feedstuffs, the Joint Food Safety and Standards Group (JFSSG), published its reasons for not recommending a ban on French meat imports on the grounds that there was "no immediate risk" to public health.
The report stated that while the practice of feeding sewage to farm animals was "repugnant" and "illegal" there were no grounds for a unilateral or Community-level ban on French meat.
In France, a two-hour blockade of the Eurotunnel terminal at Calais by members of the farming union, FNSEA, in retaliation against the boycott of French food by several British supermarkets and consumers, caused a large backlog of British lorries carrying goods from the port of Folkestone.
French farmers, angered by the boycott of their goods in Britain and by similar protests by British farmers at the ports of Plymouth and Poole in recent days, blocked Channel ports with their tractors. An FNSEA spokesman, Mr Luc Guyau, said the protest was "symbolic" and refused to rule out further disruption: "England is an island - it is easier to blockade than the Continent."
Ahead of the publication of the JFSSG report, the Conservative leader, Mr William Hague, called on the government to "stick up for Britain" and demanded an immediate ban on French chicken, pigmeat and beef following the report on farm practices in France.
"I don't know how many scientists you need to tell you that eating food that has been prepared in this way is not a good idea. Now our ministers are in the ludicrous position of saying that it's safe to eat meat from other countries but it's not safe to eat our own beef on the bone. They don't need a scientist, they need a psychiatrist," Mr Hague said.
As the unofficial trade war worsened throughout the day, Britain's Agriculture Minister, Mr Nick Brown, called for a "rational and measured debate" on the issue but insisted he was sticking to his personal ban on French products.
Speaking after the annual lunch of the British Meat Manufacturers' Association in London, Mr Brown predicted the question of France's ban on beef would come to a head tomorrow and called on the French government to obey the law.
"The UK, although we didn't like it, obeyed the law when the beef ban was in place. Now we've got the ban lifted and it's up to the French to obey the law," he said.