Why France is finding vegan croissants hard to stomach
Why France is finding vegan croissants hard to stomach
The idea of butter-free patisseries appeals to some but horrifies dairy farmers and traditionalists.
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"The fear of losing French agriculture is the fear of losing our heritage, our land. It's the farmers that maintain our landscape and make France a country for tourism. When no farmers are left, when no cows are left, it will be much worse. (But) I think we're at a turning point in terms of awareness," Lenaerts continued, pointing to strong public support for the recent farmers' protests.
I find this whole conflict so completely bewildering. I don't even know what I'm supposed to be aware of. No one is saying that farmers should disappear. Hell, much of the vegan crowd is buying local and organic and paying a premium. Much of the vegan crowd is politically left and absolutely in support of small farmers rather than big corporations. It feels like a massive missunderstanding, between two groups that should be allies. I'm suspecting a disinformation campaign behind all this, but unfortunately, the disinformation is already out there.
There are plenty of landscapes that would not exist without grazing, and also nothing about what you say addresses the whole heritage thing. About 4500 years of heritage, domesticated cows came with the Indo-European migration, thence things like the sun getting carting across the sky, Indian holy cows, etc.
And, no, farmers generally aren't very vegan-friendly, or even vegetarian-friendly. You eat what nature provides, you don't rely on B12 reinforcements and regular blood tests to be strong enough to haul hay. You turning this into some capitalist "but we're buying their stuff they should bow to our will" kind of deal is utterly insulting.
I am not talking about capitalism. I am talking about the survival of humans and the ecosystems around us. We need to battle climate change. And the industrialized cow agriculture is one of the biggest problems in that.
In particular, I also consider it more optional than e.g. heating rooms in the winter. The excessive consumption of milk products and meat only started after WW2 and is widely considered unhealthy. Food experts have been begging for us to eat more veggies, for decades.
Capitalism will not work for this. We need to financially support farmers in transitioning to more climate-friendly options. Humanity as a whole fucked up in that regard, and we need a solution sooner rather than later.
Waiting until capitalism badly self-regulates, that will cost us more and more of the ecosystems we depend on, and force more and more ethnic groups around the globe into extreme poverty, into political instability, into dictatorships and terrorism.The sooner we have a solution, the better for humanity as a whole, but I absolutely do not see a reason why this would need to happen at the cost of farmers.
And I do not have a problem with heritage. If we go back to pre-industrial levels of cow agriculture, that's plenty good for battling climate change.
And the industrialized cow agriculture is one of the biggest problems in that.
Pasture-fed cows, such as the French use for top-tier butter, isn't. And that's even before considering that there's a gazillion things more impactful than cows when it comes to climate change.
You'd have to look at Danone, not Croissants... and Danone actually isn't that bad TBH as far as giant milk companies are concerned. Arla, OTOH, is exporting milk powder into the world. The easiest change would be to ban the import of soy, or demand that producers must produce X% of the food on the same farm (it's essentially 100% for organic production already), but then that might cause some serious fallout with South America which'd suddenly sit on mountains of soy.
