AS THE beef war flared up yet again, with the French last night defying the law, science and the EU in refusing to lift their illicit ban on British imports, it falls once more to consumers here to fight this battle for our farmers' livelihoods.

For while mountains of scientific evidence may be shoved under French noses, while our ministers express the nearest to fury that diplomacy will allow and while the EU may head for the courts, the only sure way to get the perfidious government in Paris to relent is for us to make France the losers in a trade war.

And if our government cannot, or will not, declare one in response to their treachery - though, illegally and unilaterally, a trade war is what the selfish French boycott amounts to - it is up shoppers here to initiate their own by blacklisting French goods and hitting their producers even harder in the pocket than they are doing to our farmers.

For make no mistake, going through the proper channels will be of little avail. Indeed, it may actually suit the French as, that way, their wrongful ban could last for years as the battle gets bogged down in the European Court. Meantime, our farmers starve while French farmers - despite having Mad Cow Disease in their cattle herds and feeding them human excrement - hang on, with their government's connivance, to European markets that our meat producers served before the EU ban on British beef exports and to which they should now have returned.

In assuming that the law, science and common sense would persuade the French to comply, our government has been naM- ve as, time and again, France has demonstrated that neither rules nor reason prevail against its self-interest or bogus credentials as an honest EU partner.

But it is disingenuous of the Conservatives to attack this weakness for political gain at home - when their suppression and mismanagement of the BSE crisis during their time in office is one of the prime causes of British beef's present plight.

Rather it is up to the government, with all parties behind them, to force the French to back down now - and for British shoppers to be in the front of the fight.

And in the global choice of the modern supermarket, they will find plenty of other, often better quality, options.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.