Perhaps Ronald McDonald guessed he was symbolising the world's biggest restaurant chain when the first golden arches rose in California in 1955. It is less likely that Mr McDonald imagined he would become a symbol of "American imperialism" and the favourite target of angry French farmers.
Until this summer, the US chain could complain of little more than a few kidnapped clown statues in the country that invented cuisine, but in late July, Washington announced it would levy 100 per cent tariffs on French Roquefort cheese, Dijon mustard and truffles, along with several other European products, until the EU agreed to import US hormone-treated beef.
Since then, at least seven demonstrations have been staged at McDonald's restaurants across France, including three last Saturday, when tonnes of manure and rotten fruit were dumped beneath the ubiquitous arches.
In the most violent incident, on August 12th, farmers from the Peasant Confederation and the Syndicate of Ewe Milk Producers (who make Roquefort) destroyed an unfinished McDonald's at Millau, in the southern French department of Aveyron. The farmers spray-painted "McDo Go Home" on the walls, tore down half the structure and hauled away building materials and equipment on trailers.
On the same day, in Antwerp, the Animal Liberation Front set fire to another McDonald's, denouncing the company for "filling their pockets with money from ill-treated cows".
Four of the ringleaders of the Millau attack were freed on bail last Friday, but the fifth, Mr Joseph (Jose) Bove, is still in prison near Montpellier after turning himself in on August 19th. With smiling eyes and a long grey moustache, Mr Bove (46) is the farmers' Don Quixote, attacking the big food multi-nationals whom he blames for destroying French peasant life.
Since 1976, Mr Bove, his wife and two daughters have lived without water or electricity in an abandoned sheep, cattle and pig farm on the Larzac plateau. Last February, he received an eight-month suspended sentence for destroying genetically modified corn seeds at the Novartis plant near Agen. In June, e he attacked experimental genetically modified rice paddies in Montpellier.
The arrest of the "McDonald's five" created some odd affinities among French politicians. The Green Party, which participates in the left-wing French government, said the vandalism at Millau was justified because of "the strategy of the United States which wants to force Europeans to eat hormone meat they don't want".
Mr Bruno Megret, leader of the breakaway faction of the extreme right-wing National Front, demanded their "immediate liberation" because "French people who denounce the American reprisals against our home-grown products are not dangerous terrorists but real resistants to the New World Order".
The majority of the demonstrations have been peaceful. In Cahors, farmers stood outside McDonald's to give away foie gras and local wine as an alternative to junk food. Even the good-natured protests however convey a profound sense of unease which has merely found a focus in the hormone beef dispute. The overwhelming power of agri-business and wholesale distributors and the catch-all culprit "globalisation" are at the centre of the farmers' anxieties.
On a more immediate level, prices for fruit and vegetable crops have fallen and a double-ticketing scheme, intended to show consumers how big a mark-up the distributors are taking, has not calmed the farmers' anger. Milk producers are scheduled to join the movement today to protest against a 5 centime fall in price.
All see the World Trade Organisation as a "tool of American imperialism" because it approved the punitive sanctions over hormone beef. Militant French groups say they believe the WTO will soon allow the US to export products made from genetically modified food without this being indicated on the label. Another round of WTO trade negotiations are scheduled for Seattle this autumn, and the French Peasant Confederation is busy organising a protest rally on September 23rd. The director of McDonald's 750 restaurants in France told Le Figaro that his company has been "sandwiched (sic) between two monsters" - the US and the EU - and the chain keeps 45,000 French beef producers employed.
"Anti-Americanism is a part of French culture, Le Figaro concluded in a front-page editorial; the battle between Roquefort and hamburger is but "a symbol of our fin de siecle".
