In the wake of the Findus discovery, the chief executive of the Food Standards Agency, Catherine Brown, said UK firms must test all their beef products by next Friday.
However, Mr Paterson insisted he had "discussed this issue yesterday with the chief executive of the Food Standards Agency (FSA), who is completely satisfied that the information required from Sodexo has been supplied".
America, chastened by its own regulatory failures, is now more supportive of tougher, co-ordinated global regulatory standards but only to a degree: it is unenthusiastic about uniform standards for executive pay pushed by Britain.