France and Brussels clashed over the future of farming on Monday, with the European Commission dismissing French calls to curtail food imports as self-defeating and backward-looking.

"Autarky is not the future. We are not aiming at a closed market where we are self-sufficient," a spokesman for Mariann Fischer Boel, agriculture commissioner, said in response to a Financial Times interview with Michel Barnier, French agriculture minister.

Mr Barnier favours domestic production and requiring imports to match EU welfare requirements - moves the spokesman said would simply invite retaliation.

"It is not in our interests to become a fortress. If we erect new barriers, so will our trade partners," he said. "We are a major trader in agricultural products. We are the biggest exporter and importer of farm products in the world. What we believe in is trade. We are seeing increasing exports of our high-quality food products."

In 2007 the EU exported €75bn ($117bn, £59bn) of produce and imported €77.3bn. France's trade surplus with non-EU members was €8.3bn.

Imports had to meet basic health and safety standards, said Ms Fischer Boel's spokesman, adding: "That does not mean we can impose on our trading partners to put into place exactly the same legislation we have."

He praised the €45bn a year Common Agricultural Policy and stressed it would continue after market-oriented reforms, but rejected calls for it to be replicated worldwide. "It is not our business to tell people how to run their farm policy," he said.

Ms Fischer Boel, an economic liberal and former farmer, is set to unveil next month her proposed overhaul of the CAP. She favours ending milk quotas and compulsory set-aside of 10 per cent of arable land, and reducing taxpayer-funded buying of unsold crops.

However, diplomats said French proposals on "European preference" that are expected to be circulated to agriculture ministers next month were gaining support. "There is a growing feeling it is only fair and reasonable that imports are subjected to the same technical standards as our own producers," an EU official said.

He said the idea that, because of surging prices, food security was as important as energy security "no longer has people falling off their chairs with laughter".

EU farmers complain that their costs are rising because of increased environmental and animal welfare rules that producers in the rest of the world do not have to meet. After a recent vocal campaign by cattle farmers, the Commission restricted imports of beef from Brazil, where foot-and-mouth disease is rampant.

In the latest import scare, the Commission confirmed on Monday that sunflower oil from Ukraine tainted with mineral oil had been taken off the EU market. It said seven shipments totalling 40,000 tonnes were contaminated, possibly deliberately, but levels were not dangerous. It was seeking an explanation from Kiev.