British readers will remember this: that when we had bovine spnogiform encephaly (BSE) in the UK, France banned British beef from their shores. It was all perfidious Albion you see, the disease was non- or almost non-existent in the French herds.
And today we see in the Torygraph the truth:

More than 300,000 cows contracted BSE (bovine spongiform encephalopathy) in the past 13 years, 300 times more than the number of officially recorded cases, say researchers at France’s official Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm).

What, you mean that French officaldom lied? To make England look bad? Say it isn’t so! That the ban on British beef was fraudulent? That the French breach of EU rulings was pure domestic politics, not health related at all?
Could we actually believe that the French would do something quite so cynical?
Footnote: BSE is believed to cause variant CJD, a brain disease that begins by causing aberrant and illogical behaviour before destroying the brain completely. There have been reports of this in Frenchmen. My question is, how could they distinguish between the behaviour of those infected and the average Frenchman?