The meatless school menu against French politicians

The educational authorities of Lyon, a Mecca of French gastronomy, sparked a controversy when on February 15 they announced in writing to the parents of the students that the school canteens they would not include meat in their diet. “To do it faster”, they would choose a single menu and Without meat, for all the same.

Not only that, the third city of the country, after Marseille, is the capital of one of the regions with the greatest food variety in the country, the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region, but also a where environmentalists French gained ground in the last French elections in June 2020.

For this reason, the parents’ protest has been felt in La República en Marcha, as the liberal-socialist political party of Emmanuel Macron, current president, calls it, who intervened immediately.

The controversy erupted when the assistant counselor for education of the city of Lyon, Stéphanie Léger, announced the creation of a unique meatless menu to serve faster to students and speed up meals “as part of the fight against the coronavirus in 206 schools in the city.

decision fallen badly not only in the hometown of Paul Bocuse but also, much further north, at the Elysée.
Gérald Darmanin, Minister of the Interior of France, posted on his Twitter account that he considered this proposal to be part of a “scandalous ideology” and that it was “an unacceptable insult to farmers and French butchers “. Darmanin also said environmentalists’ measure responds to “an elitist policy which excludes the popular classes. “

The “meat against pasta” discussion ended up becoming the French-Boca river between environmentalists and socialists

Yesterday, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, responded by saying that she regretted “a prehistoric debate” interspersed with “hackneyed clichés like” eating vegetarian is unbalanced “.

Anyway, the local authorities have taken it upon themselves to spread the word that this decision is only temporaria and will reign until March 28, when in France the Easter holidays begin. And they added that the menu is not vegan but includes eggs and also fish.

The mayor of Lyon, Grégory Doucet, also did not want to be absent from the exchanges of tweets in recent days and stressed that the measure is “exceptional“And he reminded his readers that a 100% meat-free menu had already been implemented during the first Lockdown 2020, by Gérard Collomb, former mayor of the city, former Minister of the Interior and former socialist who became a member of La República en Marcha, in 2017.