The decision by the mayor of Lyon, considered by many to be the culinary capital of the country, to temporarily remove meat from school cafeterias during the coronavirus pandemic sparked a major political dispute in France.
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 schools in Lyon on Monday.
The city council said the decision to provide the same meatless four-course lunch was purely practical, saying the physical distance rules required more sessions in school canteens and could not serve 29,000 children in two hours if there was a choice of meat and vegetarian menus.
Food accounts for about a quarter of France’s carbon footprint and proposals are being developed by the government to encourage the French to eat more local products and consume less meat, but of better quality. The French Senate last year recommended a more plant-based diet, but mainly to contain the damaging health impact of fast food and take-out items. There have also been proposals to reward low-emission meat producers.
But resistance to any proposals to reduce meat consumption will be fierce on the part of France’s powerful agricultural lobby. Lyon’s decision was met with protests in the form of tractors, cows and goats paraded in front of the city hall. Banners proclaimed: “Meat from our fields = a healthy child” and “Stop eating meat is a guarantee of weakness against future viruses”.
Lyon City Hall has promised that the canteens will again offer the option of meat as soon as restrictions are relaxed and students have more time to eat, remembering that the temporary menus are not vegetarian, but contain fish and eggs, and that the previous one Right-wing mayor Gérard Collomb took the same step during the first wave of Covid-19 last spring.
Doucet said he eats meat and denied that he is trying to force vegetarianism on children in the city. “Being able to offer a hot meal to all children is important,” 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 central government from taking advantage of the decision. “This is absurd from a nutritional point of view and a scandal from a social point of view,” Agriculture Minister Julien Denormandie told French radio.
“We are going to stop putting ideology on our children’s dishes,” said Denormandie on Twitter. “We are just going to give them what they need to grow well. Meat is part of that. ”He said he asked the mayor of the region, the main local authority appointed by the state, to overturn the measure.
Conservative Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin also looked at what he called the “scandalous ideology” of the Lyon city council, describing the decision as “an unacceptable insult to France’s farmers and butchers”.
Darmanin said on Twitter that it was “clear that the moralizing and elitist policies of the Greens excluded low-income people. For many children, the school canteen is the only place where they can eat meat ”.
In a rare display of disagreement within the cabinet, however, Environment Minister Barbara Pompili said on a visit to a school canteen on Monday that schools should offer a daily vegetarian menu option and called the debate Lyon of “prehistoric”.
Pompili said that while many people assumed that “children from less privileged backgrounds eat less meat, research shows the opposite”. Health Minister Olivier Véran also said he did not find a meatless or fishy menu shocking.
President Emmanuel Macron, whose La République En Marche party should be “neither left nor right” and has drawn politicians from both sides, has so far avoided the dispute.
Macron said during a farm-themed visit to a farm on Tuesday that schools should aim for “a complete model of nutrition” and that “quality meat” was produced in France. But the dispute foreshadows broader political battles to come.
Doucet is one of several green politicians who gained control of the main French cities in last year’s local elections, in a defeat for Macron’s party that partly reflected growing concerns about the environmental damage of intensive agriculture and other green issues.