Paris (AFP)
The Minister of Ecological Transition, Barbara Pompili, regretted Monday "a prehistoric debate" around meatless menus in Lyon, taking the opposite view of other members of the government, while advocating "consultation".
"I very much regret that on this subject, we fall back into a prehistoric debate," said the minister on the sidelines of a trip to Charente-Maritime in a school canteen.
She regretted "worn out clichés, of the type + the vegetarian diet would be an unbalanced diet +, whereas we know that meat can be replaced by fish, eggs, legumes which provide all the necessary proteins".
The Minister of Agriculture Julien Denormandie had asked local elected officials to "bet" on young bovine meat in school menus, in order to support breeders.
"We also hear that children from somewhat disadvantaged backgrounds eat less meat than others, studies show the opposite", continued Barbara Pompili, thus taking the opposite view of the Minister of the Interior Gérarld Darmanin, for whom the choice of the ecologist town hall of Lyon to impose a menu without meat in school canteens to meet health constraints "excludes the lower classes".
"We know that compared to nutritional recommendations, children under the age of 10 on average eat more meat than expected," insisted the minister.
These "clichés" "prevent a real debate on why we want to implement vegetarian menus," lamented the Minister of Ecological Transition, recalling that livestock is responsible for 15% of greenhouse gas emissions. greenhouse in the world and that it strongly contributes to deforestation.
The government is experimenting with daily vegetarian menus in school canteens, within the framework of the Climate and Resilience Act, drawn from the work of the Citizen's Climate Convention (CCC).
The latter defends "a daily vegetarian choice in self-services from 2022".
"On the method (...) it must be done in consultation, by experimenting, by giving the choice and this is the method I use", defended Barbara Pompili.
The ecologist town hall of Lyon had indicated last week that it was going to offer a "single menu without meat" in the city's school canteens as soon as the February holidays begin, in the name of the fight against Covid.
© 2021 AFP