France's new hero: Farmer who made mess at Big Mac

PARIS - He is not really a peasant, but he does a good enough impersonation. Besides providing the country with a summer-long soap opera, Jose Bove's crusade against what he sees as the American-inspired ruin of rural France has turned him into the unlikeliest of national heroes.

The stocky, straight-talking leader of a small farmers' union, Confederation Paysanne, Bove was released from prison in the south of France last week, 20 days after he and colleagues wrecked a McDonald's restaurant under construction in the small town of Millau, north of Montpellier.

His $16,500 bail was paid by hundreds of well-wishers from around France. He has had expressions of sympathy from all sides of the political spectrum, from the Greens to the far-right National Front, the Socialists to the Gaullists. In a country inured to the protests of angry farmers, his campaign has cleverly galvanized public opinion like no other.

Where France's farmers habitually dump tons of rotting produce on roads or at town halls to complain about the EU Common Agri-, cultural Policy or the greed of supermarket chains, Bove chose one highly symbolic target.

For the cheesemakers, goat farmers, fruit growers and poultry raisers of rural southwest France, McDonald's exemplifies the inexorable march of globalization and multinationals, with all their threats to the small producer.

It is also American. Earlier this year, in retaliation for the European Union's ban on U.S. hormone-treated beef, Washington imposed crippling sanctions on such emblematic French products as foie gras, Roquefort cheese and Dijon mustard. McDonald's is the epitome of industrially produced food- even at its best it is bland.

"McDonald's encapsulates it all," said Guillaume Parmentier, who heads the French Center on the United States, a private thinktank in Paris. "It's economic horror and gastronomic horror in the same bun. In France, food equals identity. There's a fear of being taken over by new technology."

Bove has become a symbol of French resistance. He studied at Bordeaux University and was a left-wing militant active in such causes as nuclear disarmament.

But for some time he has raised sheep for Roquefort cheese on his smallholding on the Larzac plateau outside Millau, the emblematic scene of a 10-year battle between ecologists and the French army, who wanted to turn it into a firing range.

Many small farmers in the region are of like mind. Part of the "return to the land" movement of the '70s, few are of peasant stock; some manned the barricades in the May 1968 student uprising. If not exactly Left Bank intellectuals, they have a political education. This time they have caught the mood of the times.

"For 20 years now, we've been fighting for a peasant, nonpolluting agriculture," Bove told the TV cameras on his triumphant release from prison. He rejoiced in having been invited to the next World Trade Organization conference in Seattle by the French agriculture minister, Jean Glavaity, whose favorite boast is that he has never eaten a hamburger.

"Today, for the first time, we are in step with public opinion," Bove said. "There's a national consensus about bad food. People realize we need a different international logic than the economic, social and environmental dumping of modem agriculture. We have to change the WTO so that it respects people's cultural choices, does not destroy the world's peasantry and guarantees fair trade for all."

Bove has McDonald's on the run. Under the slogan "Bom in the USA, made in France" the company took full-page advertisements in French newspapers this week stressing that its buns and burgers kept French farmers in work. One outlet in Agen even substitued duck breast for beef and put Roquefort in its cheeseburgers. He has mobilized opinion in defense of la terr au bien-vivre which refers to the gastronomic southwest but has come to stand for a way of life.

As for the prime minister, Lionel Jospin said: "Mr. Bove's cause is just."