The French debate the future of steak frites

In Europe today, meat is politics. Britain’s ruling Conservatives recently accused the Labour opposition (falsely) of plans for a “meat tax”. Poland’s outgoing governing party claimed (absurdly) that its opponents would force people to eat “worms instead of meat”. In France, where consumption per person of meat is twice the global average, the debate has taken a different twist: is it possible to be left-wing and still eat meat?In the home of , red meat is more than a mere source of protein. It is an expression of muscular national identity; the farming of cattle, a guarantor of rural tradition. Steak, wrote Roland Barthes, a French literary theorist, in 1957, “communicates its national glamour” to its junior partner, the self-effacing chip. Over the past decade, however, worries about health and climate change have pushed even the French to eat less red meat. Last year their consumption of chicken overtook that of beef for the first time. In left-leaning, kale-eating quarters, is on the rise.