AS BRITAIN heads for legal action over the EU's worldwide ban on exports of its beef, it seems to have the case won already - though the European Commission looks determined to defend its action.

For if senior EU officials admit there was no legal basis for the ban and, scientifically, the beef-eaters are, as they also suggest, safe from BSE, then the problem should promptly evaporate.

Would that the situation was so simple. For all this is about money, not public health - and the commercial considerations of protecting other European producers from the collapse of confidence in beef are exposed as what is really at the back of the EU ban.

But given this sort of behind-the-scenes skulduggery, just who can the consumers trust?

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