Peter and Irene Myers have provided “a bastion of Albion in Manhattan” for the past 20 years. At Myers of Keswick they make their own meat pies with an ancient machine from Bolton and prepare Cumberland sausages without equal on this side of Derwentwater.

But lately the demands of Food and Drug Administration inspectors, Department of Agriculture regulators and Customs officials, emboldened by new powers in the US Patriot Act, have made their lives a misery and almost crippled their business.

“They want to ban everything,” Mr Myers says. “I’ve had them taking away boxes of fruit pastilles, gravy powder, oxtail soup, smoky bacon crisps. You name it. And none of it has any logic.”

Orders can be held in security checks that can add days and thousands of dollars to a shipment.

“They can do all this and then turn around and hand it back without ever telling you what they were doing,” Mr Myers says.“Part of the problem is they don’t know what any of these products are. A household name in Britain like Heinz oxtail soup is alien here, so they take it away. They don’t know if they’re looking for BSE or weapons of mass destruction, but they have to show they are looking.”

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