José Bové milks 250 sheep in the Larzac region of France, a rocky, windswept place where you would think no farmer could produce anything. But Bové turns sheep milk into one of the gastronomical treasures of the world, Roquefort cheese. Bové is a leader of the local Roquefort producers association and of the second largest farmers organization in France. So he was well-known locally before he and nine friends drove their tractors to the nearby town of Millau last year and pulled down an under-construction McDonald’s restaurant. Now he is well-known globally.
Sheep up or sheep out.
Bové’s beef with McDonald’s began with America’s beef industry, particularly its habit of dosing feedlot cattle with the kinds of hormones that athletes are tempted to use for the same reason — to bulk up fast. Europeans are disinclined to eat this high-test meat. The European Union forbids hormone-raised beef, either domestically produced or imported. That makes the American beef industry, and the government officials to whom the beef industry pays large campaign donations, very angry.
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