FRANCE have a ready-made excuse if they lose to New Zealand in the semi-finals of the World Cup at Twickenham on Sunday, French agriculture minister Jean Glavany said Thursday. Glavany, tongue firmly in cheek, was responding to reports that the French squad had feasted on British beef earlier in the week at their hotel outside Slough. “If we lose, we will know the reason why,” Glavany said in an interview with radio station Europe 1. France has refused to import British beef in breach of a European Union directive in August to end an embargo imposed in 1996 at the height of the bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) crisis.