B<\/span>esides the rotisserie, animal welfare activists also targeted a butcher, a fishmonger and a restaurant selling meat dishes in Lille in May.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n E<\/span>ach time they smashed windows and scrawled the words \u201cNo to speciesism\u201d on the shopfront. Popular with animal rights advocates, the term \u201cspeciesism\u201d suggests that mistreating non-human species is a form of discrimination akin to racism or sexism.<\/p>\n Martine Aubry, the mayor of Lille, has said the town hall intends to file a legal complain against persons unknown.<\/p>\n With only around three per cent of the population vegetarian or vegan in France, the notion of dropping meat from the menu has been slow to catch on and even frowned upon in a country proud of its boeuf bourguignon and foie gras.<\/p>\n But French butchers have hit the headlines in recent months following a spate of\u00a0hard-hitting reportages in abattoirs and battery farms<\/a>\u00a0– several by the animal welfare group L214 – \u00a0revealing the apparently inhumane conditions in which animals are being kept and killed.<\/p>\n The butchers\u2019 federation pointed out that late March, a vegan activist had even hailed the murder of a butcher in a supermarket in Tr\u00e8bes, near Carcassonne by an Islamist terrorist.<\/p>\n T<\/span>he activist posted a Facebook message saying she had no qualms over the killing of butcher Christian Medv\u00e8s, one of four people killed by gunman Radouane Lakdim on 23 March. “So does it shock you that a murderer gets killed by a terrorist? Not me, I have zero compassion for him, there is justice in it,” she wrote.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n T<\/span>he activist later received a seven-month suspended prison sentence for \u201ccondoning terrorism\u201d.<\/p>\n \u201cFaced with this escalation of violence, what will be the next stage?,\u201d asked the federation.<\/p>\n The French butchers’ plea for help comes a month after Britain’s Countryside Alliance warned that attacks on small businesses by vegan activists were on the rise.<\/p>\n Death threats, stoked by social media and encouraged by international groups of activists, have\u00a0caused butchers and farmers to “live in fear,” they warned<\/a>.<\/p>\n F<\/span>rench farmers and butchers have been fighting of late to improve the image of the meat industry.<\/p>\n
F<\/span>rench butchers have issued a plea for police protection against vegans, whom they blame for a series of attacks designed to \u201cspread terror\u201d among meat-lovers.<\/p>\n The butchers say they are coming under \u201cphysical, verbal and moral” attack from vegans and animal rights groups in the land of the \u201csteak frites\u201d, and warn that animosity against their profession is being fuelled by heavy media exposure to the anti-meat cause.<\/p>\n They are asking for the interior minister, G\u00e9rard Collomb, to intervene.<\/p>\n Their request comes days after a rotisserie in Lille, northern France, was vandalised – the fourth such incident of its kind in a matter of weeks. In the Hauts-de-France of northern France, seven butchers and charcuteries were attacked and sprayed with false blood in April.<\/p>\n Several other similar incidents were reported in the southwestern Occitanie region, they said.<\/p>\n In a letter to the minister, Jean-Fran\u00e7ois Guihard, president of the French federation of butchers and caterers said: \u201cWe are counting on your services and on the support of the entire government to stop as swiftly possible\u201d such attacks.<\/p>\n The 18,000 butchers of France were \u201cworried about media overexposure of the vegan way of life\u201d, said the federation chief.<\/p>\n Butchers were \u201cshocked\u201d by a section of society that \u201cwishes to impose its way of life, not to mention its ideology, on the vast majority\u201d of meat-eating French people, he added.<\/p>\n![\"Demonstrators](\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/content\/dam\/news\/2018\/06\/25\/TELEMMGLPICT000164817240_trans_NvBQzQNjv4Bqh--hU4cmbA-bLbhYjxlMpqloFLMFRTtilLpzqH9Lr8M.jpeg?imwidth=480\")
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