Food in France is always political. Marie-Antoinette ran into trouble after advising the poor to eat cake; the far right has made its “fight” against halal meat in schools its rallying cry and don’t get a French person started on whether to say pain au chocolat or chocolatine (a burning topic dividing the country, which was even discussed in parliament in May).

French butchers ask for police protection from vegan activists Read more

Yet even by French standards, the developing row between butchers and vegans is quite something. Angry butchers have just written a letter to the French interior minister, Gérard Collomb, asking for police protection against violence from vegan “fanatics” who have mounted a guerilla campaign of intimidation against them. Butcher’s shops around the country have been sprayed with fake blood and vandalised by vegan activists. “Stop speciesism” was daubed over one rotisserie in Lille and its windows were broken.

The butchers, who represent 18,000 businesses, call veganism an “ideology” based on “disinformation” and “intimidation”, and condemn the “terrorism” carried out by people who “want to impose their lifestyle on the majority of the people”. In the letter they write: “We count on your services and on the support of the whole government so that the physical, verbal and moral violence against us stops as soon as possible. For the love of God, let French people eat what they wish!”

Most traditional French cuisine (which was placed on Unesco’s world cultural heritage list in 2010) caters for the carnivore. Think of cassoulet, foie gras, quiche lorraine and boeuf bourguignon. And because the French take so much pride in that tradition, ditching animal products – not only meat, but also cheese – is widely frowned on.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Voltaire: noted vegetarian. Photograph: Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images

No matter that illustrious Frenchmen, such as Voltaire, were vegetarians. In the orthodox French mind, meat in various sauces makes the bulk of the meal: if you take it out, what’s left? After I went vegetarian, my parents started cooking three dishes at every family meal to make up for the lack of meat – it being thought that if you don’t eat meat, there probably won’t be enough food in your plate. In many French restaurants, vegetarians and vegans struggle to order something that isn’t composed solely of three salad leaves and a radish. And from a young age, French schoolchildren are taught that a meal isn’t complete without meat. Although carbs or vegetables are sometimes seen as optional, meat definitely isn’t.

This divide between vegans and meat-eaters, whipped up further by the butchers’ letter, is now generating the most ridiculous of culture wars. Last week, a man went viral for tweeting a photo of himself with a plate of ribs and a glass of wine, writing: “My small personal gesture against veganism: big beef ribs and little glass of Bordeaux, and it’s not even organic. #thefightcontinues.”

In the orthodox French mind, meat in various sauces makes the bulk of the meal: if you take it out, what’s left?

French butchers are right to be angry about their vandalised shops and are perhaps worried that meat sales are falling as vegetarianism and veganism are becoming more popular. But their letter unnecessarily attempts to discredit veganism, dividing “normal” people who eat meat from the wild eccentrics who don’t.

Demanding police protection for a few broken windows also seems a bit over the top in light of the power of the meat industry lobby. This group exerts such influence that it recently defeated two measures seen as “anti-meat”. First, the French parliament dropped a proposal to introduce at least one vegetarian school meal a week. Then it voted in favour of a ban of the use of meat-related words such as “sausage” or “bacon” for the selling of veggie or vegan alternative products.

Let them eat steak? Between vegans and French butchers, the beef may only have begun.

• Pauline Bock is a French journalist based in Britain. She writes for the New Statesman