A decision by the Green Mayor of Lyon, seen by many as the country’s culinary capital, to temporarily remove meat from the menu in school canteens during the coronavirus pandemic has sparked major political unrest in France.
Government ministers have accused the mayor, Grégory Doucet, of ‘ideological’ and ‘elitist’ behavior after the measure, which is also being studied by several other cities, including Paris, went into effect at Lyon schools on Monday.
The city council has said that the decision to offer the same four-course meatless lunch was purely practical, saying that physical distance rules required more seats in school cafeterias and that it could not serve 29,000 children in two hours if there was a choice of meat and vegetarian menus .
Food represents about a quarter of France’s carbon footprint and the government is developing proposals to encourage the French to eat more local produce as well as less meat, but of higher quality. The French senate recommended a more plant-based diet last year, but mainly to counter the unhealthy impact of fast food and takeaways. Proposals have also been made to reward low-emission meat producers.
But resistance to proposals to cut meat consumption will be fierce from France’s powerful agricultural lobby. Lyon’s decision was met with protest in the form of tractors, cows and goats parading in front of the town hall. Banners shouted, “Meat from our fields = a healthy child” and “Stopping meat is a guarantee of weakness against future viruses”.
The Lyon City Council has promised that canteens will again offer a meat option once restrictions are relaxed and students have more time to eat, and also points out that the temporary menus are not vegetarian but contain fish and eggs, and that the previous right-wing mayor, Gérard Collomb, took the same step during the first wave of Covid-19 last spring.
Doucet has said he eats meat and denied trying to force vegetarianism on the town’s children. “It is important to be able to offer all children a hot meal while sitting,” he told French television. “This is Lyon, the capital of gastronomy. Taste is also essential for us. ”
But that didn’t stop some ministers of France’s centrist government from jumping on the decision. “This is absurd from a nutritional point of view, and a scandal from a social point of view,” the agriculture minister, Julien Denormandie, told French radio.
“Let’s stop putting ideology on our kids’ plates,” Denormandie said on Twitter. “Let’s just give them what they need to thrive. Meat is part of it. He said he had asked the prefect of the region, the state-appointed top local official, to reverse the decision.
Conservative Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin also addressed what he called the “scandalous ideology” of Lyon’s city 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 expression of disagreement within the cabinet, Environment Minister Barbara Pompili said on Monday during a visit to a school canteen that schools should offer a daily vegetarian menu, calling the Lyon debate ‘prehistoric’.
Pompili said that while many people assumed that “children of less privileged backgrounds eat less meat, research shows the opposite.” Health Minister Olivier Véran also said he found no menu without meat or fish shocking.
President Emmanuel Macron, whose party La République En Marche was intended to be “neither left nor right” and attracted politicians from both sides, has so far sidestepped the feud.
Macron said Tuesday during a visit to an agricultural-themed farm that schools should strive for “a complete food model” and that “quality meat” was produced in France. But the feud heralds wider political battles to come.
Doucet is one of many green politicians who took control of major French cities in local elections last year, in a defeat for Macron’s party that partly reflected growing concerns about the environmental damage from intensive farming and other green issues.