French butchers have issued a plea for police protection against vegans, whom they blame for a series of attacks designed to “spread terror” among meat-lovers.

The butchers say they are coming under “physical, verbal and moral" attack from vegans and animal rights groups in the land of the “steak frites”, and warn that animosity against their profession is being fuelled by heavy media exposure to the anti-meat cause.

They are asking for the interior minister, Gérard Collomb, to intervene.

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.

Several other similar incidents were reported in the southwestern Occitanie region, they said.

In a letter to the minister, Jean-François Guihard, president of the French federation of butchers and caterers said: “We are counting on your services and on the support of the entire government to stop as swiftly possible” such attacks.

The 18,000 butchers of France were “worried about media overexposure of the vegan way of life”, said the federation chief.

Butchers were “shocked” by a section of society that “wishes to impose its way of life, not to mention its ideology, on the vast majority” of meat-eating French people, he added.