French butchers demand protection from ‘extremist’ vegans following spate of attacks

Butchers in France have written to the government to ask for police protection from the country’s vegans, accusing them of attacking their shops and trying to end traditional meat-eating culture.

The French Federation of Butchers wrote to the interior minister, saying vegans have stoned and defaced butchers’ shop fronts, spraying some with fake blood and graffiti.

The letter from federation chief, Jean-François Guihard, said such attacks were a form of terrorism and that the media was fuelling veganism and threatening butchers’ safety.

“It's terror that these people are seeking to sow, in their aim of making a whole section of French culture disappear,” he wrote.

The federation says France’s 18,000 butchers were increasingly concerned about the “excessive media hype around vegan lifestyles”, and that vegans were trying to “impose their lifestyle, or even their ideology, on the immense majority of the people”.

“We count on your services and on the support of the entire government so that the physical, verbal and moral violence stops as soon as possible,” the letter says.

Despite the butchers’ concern, vegetarians and vegans still only make up a small proportion of the French population. A 2016 survey estimated that just 3 per cent of the country considered themselves vegetarian, with vegans even fewer in number.

In recent months 15 shops have been splashed with fake blood, with seven vandalised in one part of northern France in April.

Others have seen windows broken and last year a cheesemonger in Lyon was attacked with the vandals spray-painting the words “milk is murder” and “milk is rape” on the premises.

Mr Guihard, who runs a butchery in Brittany, said his members are growing afraid – adding that butchers’ shops are more vulnerable than supermarkets or guarded slaughterhouses.

“Of course we do not demand a gendarme in front of each butcher's shop. But the state knows of these tiny groups of vegan extremists, it must take action,” he told Le Parisien newspaper.

“For artisans who are most often owners of their business with employees, the threat weighs heavily,” he said.

Asked if he was against vegetarianism, Mr Guihard said: “Not at all. They refuse to eat meat. It's their choice, it's not a problem. We just ask that people respect our profession and our customers, which means the vast majority of French people.”

Some have speculated the federation is using the small spate of attacks as a marketing opportunity.

But amid falling meat sales in France, farmers’ groups have also appealed to the government recently, calling for laws to protect the status of meat and demanding the end of the terms “sausage”, “steak”, “fillet” and “bacon”, for non-meat products.

In March a vegan activist in France was given a suspended jail sentence for posting a Facebook message saying the killing of a butcher in a French supermarket by an Islamist militant was “justice”.