LONDON -- So here we are, 60 days short of the new millennium and 66 years short of the date one thousand years ago (1066) when the French conquered Britain -- and we are in the middle of La Guerre du Rosbif, or the Beef War, or Le Front de la vache folle (the mad cow front) as the French daily paper Le Monde had it. Predictably, Britain's tabloid and rightwing press (they are not entirely the same thing) poured out a fusillade of insults at the French government for its decision to maintain the ban on importing British beef even though the rest of the European Union decided the ban should be dropped. British measures to prevent the spread of "mad cow disease" were sufficiently rigorous.

The new French food-safety agency, recently created in response to popular anxiety about swallowing poisonous food, had judged -- and this was the very first judgment from this new body -- that British beef could not be proved to be absolutely safe. Hence the ban.

Less than a fortnight later, another French agency revealed that French beef farmers had been feeding their animals reprocessed sewage, including human excrement. Shock, horror, outrage. Or, as the British Farmers' Weekly, the trade paper for farmers put it this week: "Filthy hypocrites. There are no other words to describe those across the Channel who happily explain away the contamination of livestock feed with human and animal sewage while banning the sale of British beef produced to top animal-welfare and good-hygiene standards."