France: One Man’s Meat

Like the good red wine that goes with his meat, a French butcher has to be picked with care and pampered for years—and even then he can turn sour. Rushing in where housewives fear to tread, Charles de Gaulle in 1961 tried to battle inflation by decreeing a cut in butchers’ profit margins, which in many cases amounted to 50%. Again this year, De Gaulle’s regime demanded that butchers cut some fat from their prices. Last week, striking back, indignant Parisian butchers closed clown 3,355 of 3,744 butcher shops in greater Paris and cut off beef purchases from La Villette, the vast, archaic meat-wholesaling center on the edge of the city. That strictly limited the capital’s supply. Result: chaos.

A plastic bomb wrecked one butcher’s establishment. Frenzied housewives turned in desperation to pork and horsemeat, even frozen U.S. chickens. At last, the butchers relented, but their reopened shops had only a few days’ beef supply and the threat to Paris kitchens remained. Cried Charles Leonard, chairman of the Paris butchers’ syndicate: “We are no longer under the Occupation. The Germans have left. Butchers, I am proud of you!”