Ananova:

The Tories have called for a ban on imports of French beef amid fears that BSE is rife in the country's cattle.

The French government is widely expected to announce a ban on sales of beef-on-the-bone following a rise of up to three times since last year in positive tests for BSE. Some of the country's schools and restaurants have already stopped serving French beef.

Conservative agriculture spokesman James Paice said that the European Commission should ban exports of French beef.

If it refused, Britain - whose beef is still excluded from France despite being cleared for export by Brussels - should impose a unilateral ban, said Mr Paice.

He told the BBC: "We should remember that when it was first realised that BSE could lead to new variant CJD, the European Commission banned the sale of all British beef.

I would look to the European Commission to do the same now for French beef and ban it completely. Whether they do within their own country is up to their own authorities.

"If the European Commission won't ban it, I think our Government should. That's exactly what the French have done to us in refusing to accept our beef - Europe lifted the ban and the French unilaterally decided not to."

Mr Paice pointed out that the French still allowed farmers to feed their cattle - against European rules - on meat and bone meal, which has been banned in the UK for 10 years.

He said that the rise in positive tests for BSE followed anecdotal evidence of French farmers concealing the extent of the disease in their herds by killing and burying sick cows rather than reporting them to the authorities.

Since the announcement of the high BSE levels, France's biggest chain of steakhouses, Phoenix Grill, has stopped serving home-grown beef-on-the-bone, many schools have banned French beef and sales of the meat to butchers by Paris wholesale markets have dropped by a third.

Mr Paice said: "The British Government has a responsibility to follow the Phillips Report (on BSE), which it commissioned and spent £32 million of taxpayers' money on. It is a good report which came out with a lot of sensible comments and we do need to act on it, and its main theme was the need to act quickly where there is a risk to human health."