THE French eat more beef than any other people in Europe. They are also strongly nationalistic when it comes to food: the citizens of the world's largest and proudest food-exporting nation frankly do not believe that anything from outside France can match their own produce.
So when the BSE scare blew up in the House of Commons on March 20th, the French moved fast. The following day, as those famously militant French farmers were starting 1,0 mount their own checkpoints at channel ports, the French government became the first to announce a total embargo on British beef imports.
Fear of British beef soon spread to all imported beef and beef products. Irish beef exports to France - worth £180 million per year out of total food exports of £480 million slumped by 50 per cent in a fortnight. It was a huge blow to trade with Ireland's largest continental trading partner in food.
Supermarket chains announced loudly that henceforth they would stock only French beef. A scheme by the French meat producers' association to mark French meat products with bright red, white and blue VF (Viande Francaise) stickers, due to be introduced in June, was hurriedly brought forward by the Minister for Agriculture, Mr Philippe Vasseur.
Even more vigorously than the rest of Europe, the extremely food-conscious French consumers demanded two cast-iron assurances: that beef was still safe to eat, and that it came from a traceable source in France.
My local butcher in the smart 7th district of Paris carries a large notice on his door detailing exactly which region in France his meat comes from: veal from Limousin, beef from Charolais and Aquitaine, lamb from Limousin and pork from the Loir.
In this atmosphere of fear and protectionism, there is little chance of Ireland's beef exports to France picking up in any significant way in the immediate future. According to An Bord Bia, demand has crept back up by about 10 per cent in the past 10 days as the media-heightened scare around "mad cow" disease has started to die down.
France is theoretically self-sufficient in beef. With home consumption down by around half, and the virtual collapse in the past month of France's huge beet export trade to other EU countries, the Middle East and Africa, it can just about supply the home market, particularly with the beef from female animals which French consumers prefer.
Bord Bia's hope is that as the scare passes and home consumption rises again, imports from Ireland will pick up.
To this end, food board and Embassy officials have been touring the country, emphasising the Irish industry's key selling points: that Irish procedures for tagging cows at birth, monitoring their health and keeping track of them throughout their lives are as strict, if not stricter, than they are in France; that the incidence of BSE in Ireland, as in France, is extremely low, and that Ireland has the same policy of slaughtering any affected herd; that modern Irish production methods are specifically geared to sophisticated export markets like France; and that unlike British cattle, Irish cows are reared on grass.
However, the officials admit that it will be a long, hard, uphill struggle. They emphasise they are planning for a post-crisis demand whose nature is as yet unclear but which will be dictated by the consumer as never before. Bord Bia's man in Paris, Mr James O'Donnell, says he does not expect to see Irish beef back on French shelves in any significant way before June.
French industry sources say that if and when the upturn comes, Irish beef will be in a good position to take advantage of it. "Ireland is one of the countries which works hardest and provides the best information to the supermarkets and restaurants which specialise in its meat," the head of the industry's Meat Information Centre, Mr Louis Orenga, said.
Bord Bia believes it is probably not practicable to attempt specifically to brand Irish beef as such as happens in Belgium, Spain and Germany - because of the nationalistic tendencies of the French consumer. However, it intends to carry out some tests on a regional basis.
There is also the problem of ensuring that French people know the difference between beef from Britain and beef from the Republic of Ireland. This problem was typified by a meat buyer from the Monoprix supermarket chain this week who, in response to a question about purchasing Irish beef, said they were buying from "none of those countries - Ireland, England or Wales."
"We're going to have to heighten awareness of Ireland's separateness, and we're not going to do that overnight," Mr O'Donnell said wryly.