The Great Anglo-French Beef War rumbles on. They banned our meat from their bourguignon and now we must remove theirs from our wellingtons.

France began the conflict by banning British beef despite the European Union declaring it safe.

The latest volley has been fired by York market traders. They want the French Christmas market to be scrapped to show solidarity with beleaguered British farmers.

This may well prove a popular idea. But as we indulge in such tit-for-tat exchanges it is easy to lose sight of the fundamental cause of this dispute.

We have reached this messy impasse by allowing unnatural modern agricultural techniques to flourish unchecked.

The great pressure on farmers to provide cheap food has led to British farmers feeding sheep offal to cattle and the French feeding raw sewage to their livestock.

The French, being a very health-conscious race, have reacted particularly badly to the BSE scare.

Admittedly, their ban may be partially motivated by the politics of protectionism - the same might be said of the York market traders' position - but the beef war raises issues that are far more important than ancient Anglo-French rivalry.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.