OREANDA-NEWS. In Lyon, France, since the end of February, meat has been excluded from school lunches. All school canteens by order of the mayor Gregory Doucet, representing the party of «green» will replace the product for fish, eggs and dairy products. The ban on meat in the menu of schoolchildren will be valid for 7 weeks. Although this measure is temporary, it has caused a wide response in society.

Agriculture and Food Minister Julien Denormandy said Doucet's decision was a «disgrace» from a social point of view, as it primarily concerned children whose families could not afford meat in their daily diets. In his Twitter account, the minister called for: «Stop putting ideology on our children's plates. Give them what they need to grow. Meat is part of that, too».

The Minister of Ecology, Barbara Pompili, indirectly supported the mayor of Lyon and complained, that because of this story, the government had to wallow in a «prehistoric debate». Pompili also provided counterarguments to the thesis of social injustice: studies show, that children from families in need of social support eat quite a lot of meat.

Many suggest, that the Lyon mayor's initiative was actually aimed at satisfying the desire of children from Muslim families not to eat pork. Sabine von Oppeln, an expert on France at the Free University of Berlin said, that the discussions on this topic have been ongoing in France for a long time.