A decision by the green mayor of Lyon, considered by many to be the culinary capital of the country, to temporarily take meat off the menu in school canteens during the coronavirus pandemic has led to a major political row in France until resulted.
Government ministers accused Mayor Grégory Doucet of “ideological” and “elitist” behavior after the measure, which is also being studied by several other cities, including Paris, took effect in Lyon’s schools on Monday.
The city council said the decision to offer the same meatless four-course lunch was purely practical, saying physical distance rules were needed to put more in the school canteen and that it could not serve 29,000 children within two hours there is no choice between meat and vegetarian menus. .
Food represents about a quarter of France’s carbon footprint and proposals are being developed by the government to encourage the French to eat more local produce and consume less meat, but of a higher quality. The French Senate last year recommended a more vegetable-based diet, but mainly to counteract the unhealthy impact of fast food and takeaways. There were also proposals to reward low-emission meat producers.
However, the resistance to any proposals to reduce meat consumption will stem from France’s powerful farming. The Lyon decision was paraded in front of the town hall with protests in the form of tractors, cows and goats. Banners said: “Meat from our fields = a healthy child” and “Stopping meat is a guarantee of weakness against future viruses”.
Lyon City Council has promised that the canteen will once again offer a meat option once the restrictions are relaxed and pupils have more time to eat, pointing out that the temporary menus are not vegetarian but contain fish and eggs, and that the previous right Mayor Gérard Collomb took the same step during the first Covid-19 wave last spring.
Doucet said he ate meat, and denied wanting to impose vegetarianism on the children of the city. “It is important to offer a hot meal to all children,” he told French television. ‘This is Lyon, the capital of gastronomy. For us, taste is also essential. ”
But that did not stop some ministers of France’s centrist government from jumping on the bandwagon. “This is absurd from a nutrition point of view and a scandal from a social point of view,” Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie told French radio.
“Let’s stop putting ideology on our children’s boards,” Denormandie said on Twitter. ‘Let’s give them just what they need to grow well. Meat is part of it. He said he had asked the prefect of the region, the state-appointed local official, to dominate the move.
Conservative Home Secretary Gérald Darmanin also referred to what he called the “scandalous ideology” of the Lyon council, describing the decision as an “unacceptable insult to French farmers and butchers”.
Darmanin said on Twitter that it was “clear that the Greens’ moralizing and elitist policies exclude low-income people. For many children, the school canteen is the only place where they can eat meat ”.
In a rare version of disagreement in the cabinet, Environment Minister Barbara Pompili said during a visit to a school canteen on Monday that schools should offer a daily vegetarian menu, calling the Lyon debate ‘prehistoric’.
Pompili said that although many people assumed that “children with less privileged backgrounds eat less meat, research shows the opposite”. Health Minister Olivier Véran also said he did not find a menu with meat or fish shocking.
President Emmanuel Macron, whose La République En Marche party was “neither left nor right” and has attracted politicians from both camps, has bypassed the queue so far.
Macron said during an agricultural visit to a farm on Tuesday that schools should strive for a complete nutrition model and that ‘quality meat’ is produced in France. But the row predicts that broader political battles must come.
Doucet is one of a number of green politicians who gained control of major French cities in local elections last year, in a defeat for Macron’s party that partly reflected growing concerns about environmental damage due to intensive farming and other green issues.