No room at the Elysée for France's wannabe "presidential cow"

It hasn't been a particularly good week for the French president François Hollande.

Well certainly not as far as potential presidential pets are concerned.

First up of course there was the bellowing camel offered to him by grateful Malians, and then reports that it had been stolen and wouldn't after all be making its way to France.

Now comes the tale of a cow that has - in a manner of speaking - been refused entry to the lawns of the French president's official residence, the Elysée palace.

It's seems representatives from the Association des éleveurs bovins or Cattle breeding association (somehow the French seems more...er...poetic) wanted to show their...um...appreciation of the French president ahead of this year's Salon d'Agriculture which opens in Paris on February 23.

What better way, they must have thought, than to offer him his own cow?

After all, there aren't any other pets at the presidential pad right now.

François Hollande at Salon d'Agriculture, 2012 (screenshot France Télévisions report)

Well, while Hollande was in Brussels cutting a budget deal with the other leaders of the European Union, it was left up to officials at the Elysée palace to break the bad news to the association, that no, they wouldn't be allowed to hand over the beast in person.

Instead, they'll just have to hope that Hollande pops in to pay them a visit during the agricultural fair.

All a bit of a shame really because, as you can see from the video, Hollande was up close and personal with cows during his marathon 12-hour visit to the annual fair last year.

Heck he even helped give one of them a shower.

There again, he was in campaigning mode.

Moo!

French pigs grunt and fart but are also great to eat

Well that's the message pig farmers in northwestern France are trying to get across about the animals they raise to make a living.

screenshot from Les éleveurs de porcs bretons website

Vegetarians move along, this won't appeal.

"Il grogne, il pète, et pourtant grâce à lui vous mangez sain, sûr, bon et breton !" is the slogan the association Les éleveurs de porcs bretons (Brittany pig farmers) has come up with to help update their image.

Or put another way, "It grunts, it farts, but thanks to it you eat healthily, safely, well and what's more it's from Brittany...yes it loses a little something in translation.

It features in an advertising campaign the association will be launching on June 13 with posters being put up in over 400 villages and towns throughout the region and it's an attempt to improve the image of the pig-farming sector among Bretons and at the same time encourage them to eat something so important to the economy of the region.

Appearing on the poster is "David" - a thirty-something, cleancut, boy-next-door type farmer - and alongside him, what TF1 news calls, "A cute piglet reminiscent of the star of the film 'Babe'."

It might be a more than quirky way of trying to counter the image the public has of pig farming, but as the association's press release says that's exactly its intention.

"There's a certain mistrust of pig farmers and that's exactly the kind of public perception we want to change by being deliberately provocative and offbeat," says the release.

"We also want to encourage Bretons to eat a meat that's farmed locally and remind them just how good it is."

And there's also a testimonial from that farmer "David" featured in the campaign.

He is in fact David Riou, a pig farmer from Finistère in the far west of Brittany.

He wants pig farming to break away from the polluting and unhealthy image it has had, but he's aware the sector faces an uphill battle to change peoples' opinions.

"Of course our farms have an impact on the envirnoment and over the years all those headlines about the spreading of manure, nitrates in the water the crisis of green algae have left their mark," he says.

"We've been working for the past 15 years to make sure our environmental impact is lower, but it takes time," he continues.

"For example over the past decade we've lowered by 20 per cent the level of nitrates in our local river, and we mustn't forget that the industry employs around 31,000 people locally."

Pass the apple sauce.

Sarkozy confuses Alsace with Germany

It's surely not the sort of mistake anyone in France would want to make in public, let alone the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy.

Nicolas Sarkozy in Truchtersheim, Alsace (screenshot from BFM TV)

But on Tuesday during his latest round of New Year's wishes, a slip of the tongue caused Sarkozy momentary embarrassment and brought about a somewhat hollow laugh, as the free daily paper 20 minutes described it, among those in the audience.

It happened in the town of Truchtersheim in the eastern French département of Bas Rhin in Alsace.

It's a region which borders Germany and one, which along with neighouring Lorraine, changed hands several times between the French and the Germans in the 19th and 20th centuries.

After the end of World War II Alsace once again officially became part of France.

Sarkozy was addressing an audience as part of his New Year's wishes, this time to the country's agricultural sector and those living in rural areas and he was talking about the difference in (agricultural) competitiveness between France and Germany.

"I can accept that it's difficult to compete with China and India but not with Germany," he said.

"And I'm not saying that just because I'm in Germany ('Allemagne" in French)...er I mean Alsace," he quickly corrected himself before, as a blogger on the national daily Le Monde wrote, "He tried to make light of his mistake."

Lapsus : Quand Sarkozy confond l'Allemagne et l'Alsace Vidéo LCIWAT sélectionnée dans Actualité

Humour perhaps that wasn't necessarily in the best of taste as he made a reference to the programme he has put in place to provide more suitable care for those suffering from Alzheimer's.

Too late though for making light though.

Too late though.

The deed had been done and the moment recorded...for doubtless wider distribution on the Net.

As the weekly news magazine L"Express reminds readers, 2010 was certainly a rich one in terms of slips of the tongue most (in)famously perhaps European member of parliament Rachida Dati's "inflation-fellation" blunder during a television interview.

But confusing Alsace and Germany, although at first sight appearing a trivial mistake, and certainly not an intentional one is (to say the least) "unfortunate given the history of the region."