While most French people condemn factory farming for either ethical or environmental reasons there is a small minority within this group who advocate for plant-based diets. For those who either enjoy the taste of meat or don’t want to put too much thought into realities of husbandry and/or slaughterhouses, the above mentioned position appears to be too extreme. Hence the prominence of public figures like Jean-Pierre Coffe, Périco Legasse or Jocelyne Porcher (the French equivalents of Joel Salatin and Michael Pollan) who promote yesteryear’s small-scale farming and blame vegans for advocating for the abolition of animal agriculture altogether. Melanie Joy, amongst others, named this new attitude “neocarnism.” Within the span of a couple of years, neocarnism has become hegemonic in French (as well as US) media. The concept “happy meat” or “viande bio” is a perfect example of “passive revolution” (Gramsci) as 1) nothing changes fundamentally for the environment and farm animals, and 2) the animal-industrial complex manages to tranquillize people’s conscious while buying and eating animal products.
Renan Larue is a writer and teacher of French literature at the University of California in Santa-Barbara, where he created a Vegan Studies program which explores the intersection between vegetarian and vegan food choices and philosophy, touching on politics, economics, religion, and psychology.
