First it was chlorine-rinsed chicken. Now the Americans want to get another culinary delicacy into UK supermarkets - hormone-pumped beef.

The item is explicitly mentioned in a list of trade barriers the United States wants to reduce in an official document published this year.

American trade officials are frustrated by a European Union-wide ban on beef that is packed with hormones to fuel its growth. Critics claims the ban defies world trading rules and is only in place to protect cow farmers on the Continent.

However green activists will likely oppose lifting the ban and demand the Tories deliver their promise to protect environmental standards after Brexit.