The beef between vegans and non-vegans rages on.

We’ve Gordon Ramsay going toe-to-toe with vegans and YouTubers making light mockery of both meat eaters and vegans in the past.

This time around, however, the fight has taken a rather nasty turn, and it’s affecting people’s livelihoods.

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

More from The Telegraph:

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.

In addition, animal welfare activists also targeted a butcher, a fishmonger and a restaurant selling meat dishes in Lille last month.

In each incident, they would smash windows and sprayed the words “No to speciesism” – the mistreating of non-human species – in graffiti on the shop-fronts.

Ja no, it’s definitely not fun and games anymore.

Jean-François Guihard, president of the French federation of butchers and caterers, wrote a letter to Collomb, in which he practically begged the minister for help:

We are counting on your services and on the support of the entire government to stop [these attacks] as swiftly possible.

Meanwhile, 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 …

With only around three per cent of the population vegetarian or vegan in France, the notion of dropping meat from the menu has been slow to catch on and even frowned upon in a country proud of its boeuf bourguignon and foie gras.

However, French butchers have come under fire recently after news reports, several of which were made by animal welfare group L241, found abattoirs and battery farms to be keeping animals in inhumane conditions.

As a result, butchers and farmers live in fear due to the death threats they receive. At the same time, they’re trying their damnedest to improve the image of the meat industry.

Time will tell if this conflict will come to a hopefully peaceful, non-bloody end.

[source:telegraph]