IT IS probably a good thing the French market held in Darlington over last weekend was not being held this weekend. Furious local farmers might have been sorely tempted to make some form of protest over the French Government's shameless attempts to protect its beef market.

The French did, finally, lift the ban on imports of British beef this week. They did so only to try to avoid the imposition of swingeing fines - £100,000 a day - for their illegal ban.

And in the process they called for a change in the European regulations governing the inspection of meat, which if implemented, would cost British farmers, and British farmers alone, up to £25 per animal.

Easingwold farmer, and NFU president, Ben Gill was understandably and quite rightly apoplectic at the cheek of the French. British beef is now the safest in Europe and that is not an unthinking, xenophobic boast. For the French to seek to impose its lesser inspection standards on the UK while trying to wriggle out of its obligations for breaking EU rules is breath-taking in its audacity.

We trust the European Commission will still endeavour to enforce payment of the fine and direct at least some of it to those British farmers who suffered as a result of a wholly unjustified ban.