French butchers are seeking police protection from "militant" vegans, citing attacks from small groups of people with anti-meat and anti-breeding ideologies.

French Confederation of Butchery, Butchers and Delicatessens (CFBCT) president Jean-Francois Guihard wrote to France's Interior Minister Gerard Collomb requesting better police protection.

The request came after multiple reports of vandalism at shops and intimidation from vandals using anti-meat slogans.

The CFBCT said vegan "militants" had attacked butchers shops in part due to the "over-mediaisation of the vegan lifestyle".

The French international press agency Agence France-Presse reported that in Hauts-de-France, near the Belgium border, seven butcher shops were sprinkled with fake blood in April, and a butcher shop and a fish shop had their windows broken and the facades tagged with the inscription "stop to speciesism".

"We are counting on your services and the support of the entire government to stop, as soon as possible, violence, physical, verbal, moral suffered by the honest professionals that we are," it stated in a letter dated June 22 and signed by Mr Guihard.

"For several months, the 18,000 butchers and butchers of our country have been worried about the consequences of the over-mediaisation of the vegan lifestyle.

"Disinformation must be answered, and this is what we do on a daily basis, by reaffirming the truth to our fellow citizens.

"Concerning the intimidation of which we are the victims, it has been characterised for several months by violent acts of violence that even seem to become commonplace."

The one-page letter from the CFBCT president said the attacks on the members and the industry was nothing short of 'terrorism'.

"For it is the terror that seek to sow a few individuals or organisations that have only one purpose: to remove, simply, a whole section of French culture which owes so much to the expertise of its artisans," he said.