French food vs. fast food

Michelle Martin / ENN 22nov99

When the wiry farmer with the "fu man chu" mustache found himself arrested for his actions, M. Bové quickly became France’s newest national hero.

Bové chose to remain behind bars for 20 days, thus enhancing his image as a “martyr” to the country’s growing revolt against industrialized food production. He was finally released on the $17,000 bail his supporters and Roquefort cheese producers had raised on his behalf. Bové remains “under examination,” a step short of being charged with a crime.

In an attempt to defuse the situation, Denis Hennequin, the President of McDonald’s France, has said the company won’t press charges against Bové and the others for the $113,000 in damages done to the Millau franchise.

It may not be enough. Bové’s imprisonment has made him and the 500-member Farmer’s Confederation — which he founded in 1987 — famous and increasingly powerful as sympathizers around the country send the Confederation their financial support.

It Started With Beef

Standing at the heart of Jose Bové’s actions and his national and even international popularity are American cows.

Earlier this year, the European Union banned imports of U.S. hormone-treated beef, claiming it causes cancer. The World Trade Organization declared that the ban had no medical basis and was therefore illegal. The European Union refused to budge from its position.

President Clinton’s administration responded by placing punitive U.S. sanctions on 100 French food products, including Roquefort cheese, foie gras, and other traditional foods dear to French hearts. Towns like Millau, in southern France, and the gastronomic Larzac region where Bové lives and raises his sheep for milk and meat, have been particularly hard hit by duties on products like ewe’s cheese.

Bigger Than Beef

But Jose Bové and the Farmers Confederation are protesting much more than the U.S. sanctions. They are fighting what Bové calls “a global problem,” which is why he is considered a hero and why his and the Confederation’s actions have won the support of the Community Party, the Green Party, French labor unions, ecologists, and much of the French public.

That “global problem” includes industrialized food production, which is crowding out France’s small farmers and their distinctive products, and the growing domination of big retail distributors, like the recent merger of France’s Carrefour and Promodes retail chains, which created the world’s second largest retailer.

Finally, there is the pressure of economic globalization, which is perceived as an American threat to French livelihoods and to traditional ways of life. “There is a certain allergy in Europe to the extent of American power accumulated since the cold war’s end,” says French political analyst Allain Duhamel.

Citing the “invasion of France by American food,” and the tyranny of “American imperialism,” Bové and the Farmers Confederation have struck a chord with French citizens by claiming they fight “to defend the right of people to feed themselves with their own food in their own way and against the determination of the United States to impose their way of eating on the whole planet.”

Targeting the Golden Arches

The “global problem” sparked waves of protests throughout France in the summer and fall. McDonald’s, more often than not, has been the national scapegoat.

Protestors around France have dumped home-grown fruits and vegetables on the counters of some of the nation’s 750 McDonald’s restaurants. On October 16, Jose Bové led 150 Farmers Confederation members in a sit-in at the same McDonald’s restaurant he had vandalized in August. The protestors picnicked on traditional French cuisine.

McDonald’s has done nothing overt to warrant these protests and attacks. As McDonald’s spokeswoman Alessandra di Montezemolo has said, “We are attacked because we are a Number One global American brand.” McDonald’s has 24,500 restaurants in 116 countries.

In September, McDonald’s responded to protests and attacks with a “Born in USA, Made in France” public relations campaign proclaiming that the French franchises are owned by the French, that they employ French workers, and that 80 percent of the products sold in its French restaurants are French-produced, thus supporting thousands of French farmers and local economies.

But this is a nation of gourmets and McDonald’s is considered a guilty pleasure at best. Few will admit to actually eating at McDo (“Mac-doh”), as the French call it. Graffiti like “End McDomination” covers many buildings in Millau, the town Jose Bové made famous. But since the Millau McDonald’s finally opened, it has enjoyed strong business.

Tampering With Mother Nature

Adding fuel to the fire, Jose Bové ignited is the growing European reaction against genetically engineered or modified foods. Compounding European concerns are the several food scares it has weathered recently, including the 1996 outbreak of “mad cow” disease in Great Britain, supposedly contaminated bottles of Coca-Cola in France and Belgium, and the discovery this year of dioxin-laced animal feed that created dioxin-polluted chicken in Belgium, provoking what the New York Times calls a “widespread fear of any ‘tampering’ with nature.” U.S. hormone-enhanced beef falls under that purview.

The European Union insists that, under WTO rules, it isn’t bound by majority scientific opinion in its assessment of potential health risks, and that it will probably regard with equal concern imported genetically modified foods. Nevertheless, it has offered a compromise. It will pay the U.S. the $117 million in damages levied by the WTO. The U.S. wants the money to go to beef producers affected by the European ban.

Meanwhile, Jose Bové plans to attend the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle, Wash., next week which will address many issues dear to his heart.

“My struggle remains the same,” Bové has said. “The battle against globalization and for the right of peoples to feed themselves as they choose.”

Michelle Martin lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico and writes about environmental and development issues.