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!

"CHEESE" - it's the annual Salon d'Agriculture...and election year

Watching the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, making his way around the annual Salon d'Agriculture in Paris on Saturday was more than just a little surreal.

Salon d'Agriculture (screenshot TF1 news)

Surrounded by a heaving scrum of journalists armed with microphones and cameras, Sarkozy spent over four hours at the show in his official capacity but, this being an election year, much more was riding on his presence and of course his behaviour.

Few will forget his now infamous 2008 visit to the show and the "Casse toi, pauvre con" mark he left on it.



And, on several occasions since, he has not exactly endeared himself to France's farmers with some of his comments.

He's also a devout towny - born and bred - who, according to political journalist Michaël Darmon, has always insisted that when he has been zapping around the country in his official capacity, he manages to avoid, in so far as possible, staying overnight in "the provinces".

But Darmon says Sarkozy's advisors have done their work and he also seems to have realised the importance of appearing to be a friend of the country's farmers, to such an extent that a recent opinion poll showed him to be well ahead in their voting intentions.

Farmers may have apparently been won over, but does anybody else really believe that Sarkozy actually enjoys nibbling on the smelliest of cheeses, watching cows being milked or having to pat a handsome horse?

Nicolas Sarkozy at the Salon d'Agriculture (screenshot TF1 news)

Somehow it just all seems to be too contrived and so very far from the obvious enjoyment displayed by his predecessor, Jacques Chirac, who always appeared to be at ease taking a healthy swig of whatever was pressed into his hand or tucking in to regional produce.

Still, four hours of pressing the flesh and proving to the French electorate that he is every much a child of rural France as the next man or woman is an essential part of Sarkozy's road to re-election.

And it's one all the other candidates will have to endure or enjoy if they wish to replace him at the Elysée palace.

The day after Sarkozy's visit, it was the turn of François Bayrou, leader of the centrist Mouvement démocrate (Democratic Movement, MoDem) party and there was no real difficulty for the "son of a farming family" as he is always eager to point out.

Once again Bayrou appeared to be in his element

Tuesday should be more "interesting" though as the Socialist party candidate François Hollande has promised to spend a marathon 10 hours at the show.

That's an awful lot of cheese!

Farmer fined again for "parking tractor" in Paris

Even though Patrick Pilak has a right to be annoyed and frustrated, he seems to be keeping a remarkably cool head.

He has just received another fine for parking illegally in tenth arrondissement of the French capital.

(from Wikipedia)

Something of a surprise really as spaces are plentiful in August when many Parisians are on holiday and it's not that difficult to find a place to leave your vehicle without picking up a ticket.

But of course this is no ordinary case of "illegal parking".

You see Pilak isn't from Paris and the vehicle in question isn't exactly one that would go unnoticed if you saw it parked in the rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis, where the ticket was issued.

It's a tractor.

Pilak uses it for his job.

He's a farmer in the village of Gouzougnat in the département of Creuse - almost 400 kilometres from Paris.

OK. OK. So it's a simple mistake - right?

Well, not so simple as it's not the first time he has received a fine for apparently parking his tractor in Paris.

Just after Christmas last year he opened his mail to discover the first of what has now amounted to three different tickets for a clearly impossible parking infringements.

Back then he joked about it, sent a letter by registered delivery saying there must have been some mistake and thought no more of it.

He didn't receive any response.

In May a second ticket plopped through his letterbox - the same registration number (his tractor), the same street - rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis in Paris.

This time he wasn't so amused, as he told the regional daily, La Montagne.

"Once again I sent letter by registered delivery and I also filed a complaint," he told the paper.

"The first time it made me smile, but for it to happen a second time means that it's clearly not a computer error."

The response? There wasn't one - well not to his letter.

But there was another parking ticket - a third one - that arrived this week. Same registration number (his tractor of course), same street.

"To me it's obvious that someone is driving around with false number plates," he told RTL radio.

"I've half a mind to drive to Paris just to see if I can actually drive a tractor along rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis and, who knows, perhaps I'll actually find the vehicle that's driving around with the same licence plate."

Should Pilak actually carry out his "threat" he would likely have the backing of the mayor of Gouzougnat, Eric Yoth, who thinks the whole story has now gone beyond a joke.

"It surely can't be that difficult to find the vehicle or the owner as three tickets have now been issued - all in the same street," he told Agence France Presse.

"This ridiculous story has to have an end."

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.

French farmer fined for feeding ducks cannabis

You might want to check your diaries because the following tale sure seems as though it's an April Fool.

But even though it's without doubt just a tad ridiculous and certainly offbeat, it is in fact true.

A court the southwestern town of Rochefort has fined a local farmer, Michel Rouyer, and given him a suspended sentence for feeding his ducks cannabis.


Yep, you read correctly. Rouyer, who keeps 150 of the birds and fattens them up in time for the seasonal rush in France on foie gras, had cultivated a dozen or so cannabis plants as well for purely "medical reasons" of course.

Mind you not his own.

According to Rouyer, who lives in the village of La Gripperie-Saint-Symphorien, he used the leaves of the plants to feed to his ducks in the final weeks before they were slaughtered because cannabis acted as an excellent dewormer.

It was a claim he made when he appeared before magistrates insisting that, "A specialist advised me to do it" and maintaining that the plants were grown exclusively for use by his ducks and he didn't trade in the drug at all.

And his lawyer, Jean Piot, in defending his client, told the court that, strange as the explanation might be, "None of the ducks had worms and were all in excellent health."

Perhaps not surprisingly that argument failed to cut much ice and Rouyer received a one-month suspended sentence and a €500 fine.

It seemed to cut little ice with the court though who handed down a €500 fine and delivered Rouyer a one-month suspended sentence.

It is, as the regional daily Sud Ouest remarks in reporting the story, certainly a most timely decision coming in the same week as Unesco recognised French gastronomy as a world treasure.

Quack - man!

Cows "trash" French cemetery

The image of cows grazing quietly in the field is surely one of those simple delights of the countryside - be it in France or anywhere else for that matter.

But in the northern French village of Radinghem those gentle creatures decided to go walkabouts last Thursday in search of pastures new.

Unfortunately, as the regional newspaper La Voix du Nord reports, for their owner and the local villagers the 33-strong herd ended up in the village cemetery which, not being enclosed in any way, offered them easy access.

That's where the herd spent the night, and not just chewing the cud.

Instead cows being cows they managed to wreak their own kind of bovine havoc, damaging graves stones, knocking over ornaments and generally causing a mess that left more than a dozen final resting places "trashed".

The following morning Michaël Baheux, the village mayor, after having been informed what had happened, closed the cemetery, put a clean-up campaign into action, contacted some of the families concerned and had photo's taken of the mess so that insurance claims could be made against the owner.

A stonemason has apparently also been contacted to give quotes for repairs.

Proof perhaps that village life, although generally more sedate, can also have its moments.

Moo!

image from Wikipedia, author Daniel Schwen

Even less "loving thy neighbour" in rural France

It was a story that first appeared here last month involving a young farmer, Jean-Hugues Bourgeois, and the campaign of violence and intimidation that had been launched against him by others from within the local community.

The setting is the farm on which he raises goats to produce organic cheese in the hamlet of La Boge, which forms part of the village of Teilhet (population 300) in the Auvergne region of France.

The hope in September - certainly from Bourgeois' point of view when he contacted the media - was that increased interest in his plight through national coverage and the launch of a police investigation would see a quick and peaceful resolution to a situation that was threatening to spiral out of control.

Sadly that has not turned out to be the case, and at the weekend a 250m2 barn on the property he farms was raised to the ground, destroying all the hay and grain for his animals as well as a tractor.

As Bourgeois told the media last month, his problems started in March this year, when a local farmer who had befriended the "newcomer" and was close to retirement, offered him the chance to rent an extra 50 hectares of prime land to expand the business.

"Things started to take a turn for the worse when I was given the chance to rent a little more land than perhaps someone who was an outsider and something of a 'marginal' might ordinarily have had," he told TF1 news in September.

That interview - and many others Bourgeois gave - came after several months during which part of his herd of goats had been shot, graffiti had been daubed on his house, tyres had been punctured, fires had been set in outbuildings causing loss of animal feed and finally an anonymous rape and death threat had been made against his wife and eight-year-old daughter.

Bourgeois took his plight directly to the media, mainly because he felt his case wasn't being taken seriously by either the local mayor or the police.

And indeed national coverage led to the opening of an official investigation.

But that didn't prevent this latest incident from happening. And Bourgeois, who is now reluctant to go into detail about what he thinks were the causes of the fire or give interviews, feels that there is a connection between what happened over the weekend and his earlier decision to speak out.

"I'm paying a high price for having broken the code of silence," he told the national daily Le Parisien.

"I've been advised not to say any more," he added.

The 29-year-old might not be willing to say anything, but at least some of his neighbours now appear more inclined to talk.

"He's a brave man," one of them told the newspaper. "To put up with all that has happened and to stay is amazing.

"We're all convinced that this latest fire was not an accident."

But the theory that this most recent incident is linked to the previous ones, or that a member of the local farming community might be behind the attacks and threats, is still not one the mayor of Teilhut, Bernard Duverger, is ready to endorse.

He's insists on urging restraint before jumping to conclusions.

Last month, before the police started their investigations Duverger said that although he condemned the actions that had been taken against Bourgeois and he had undoubtedly been a "victim", there was nothing to prove that the culprit had been one of the other local farmers.

And Duverger offered much the same sort of advice in Monday's Le Figaro.

"If it's accidental it's an unfortunate coincidence. If it's a criminal then it's part of a relentless campaign against him and his family," he said.

"Until we know how this fire was started, we need to remain calm."

Much the same response has come from Pascal Palayer, a spokesman from the regional police as a forensics team sent the farm to pick through the ashes.

"It's another element in the case," Palayer confirmed. "But we have to be careful about making accusations, and about the theory of criminal intent."

Bourgeois still insists - just as he did one month ago - that he intends to stay put. But he also admits that he hasn't been able to sleep since the latest incident.