by Standing behind the counter in a blue-checked shirt and white apron, Jacques Libáin wields his cleaver with precision as he serves an aging customer’s choice.
His eye looks, as one commentator said, like a timeless Parisian character straight out of the movie Amélie.
In fact, Mr Lebanon is the last horse butcher left in the French capital and his establishment is on its last legs.
“You can sometimes find horsemeat in markets but I’m the last horse butcher in the capital,” says Mr Leban, a “cheval extra” label behind him next to rows of red wine.
For more than half a century, Mr Lebanon has been serving loyal clients everything from horse entrecôte to cervelas – or sausages – in his shop in Rue Cambronne, west of Paris.
The shop front is hard to find on a wooden horse head lit up by pink neon at night.
When it started, there were 300 “boucheries chevallines” in the French capital. Now there is only one and as an 80-year-old, its owner is knackered.
“I had it. I’m all in my own head. I am treated as an assassin because I sell horsemeat,” says Mr Lebanon, who will soon retire without a successor. In recent years the butcher has endured insults, threats and fake blood smeared on his shop by animal rights activists.
Seen as a lean and healthy alternative to beef, pork and lamb, horsemeat has fallen out of favor with the younger generation and many find themselves eating their four legged friends who are no longer left behind either. among the increase in animal welfare matters and vegetarianism. .
Its sole rival in Paris, Davin, a family business in the 14th arrondissement and the largest in the capital, has just been sold and shipped out. They brought their three wooden horse busts. The new owner has no regrets about disposing of horse meat.
“The horse is over. Mental health has changed,” he told Le Parisien.
Mr. Lebanon can still remember when horse meat was all the rage. “Forty years ago there were four horse butchers in our own neighbourhood. Back then, I had delivered four horses every week. Now it’s just a little bit,” he says.
Regarding the customers, “there are fewer customers buying horsemeat. It’s mainly elderly people,” he admits.
They are a loyal group, and regulars praise their professionalism and the quality of the pitiful meat with one exclaiming: “All meat and no tendons. The quality of horsemeat is top notch and it’s great for your health! I often go out of my way to buy it.”
Another swore it helped lower cholesterol and strengthened those with anemia.
Mr Lebanon’s shop is mentioned in the Gault Millau food guide, which says: “The animals come from Meaux and are carefully selected and prepared using traditional methods, so they are always reliable. Cervelas, mortadella and horse sausages are all made by a qualified supplier. Jacques Libáin is a horse bet and a sure bet.”
But times are changing, according to unequivocal figures from the Ministry of Agriculture. In 2013, around 20,000 horses were killed in France for meat.
Last year, that figure fell to just 3,882. According to Stéphane Lajoie, president of the French National Horse Syndicate, “by 2021, there will be only 250 horse butchers in all of France”.
In Paris, the slaughterhouses that used to supply horse butchers have all disappeared.
In a broader trend, over the past 20 years, the capital has lost a third of its butchers of all kinds, according to Apur, the Paris urban planning agency. Factors include butchers retiring and finding no takers, competition from supermarket butchers and mad cow disease.
Horse butchers, for their part, have been hit by a series of scandals, including one in which horsemeat was widely passed off as beef. Controversy about the status of horses as pets has also reared its head, with campaigns being led in particular by the Brigitte Bardot Foundation.
“Awareness is growing on the issue of meat, especially horse meat”, Amandine Sanvisens, co-founder of Paris Animaux Zoopolis, the main animal protection organization in Paris, told Le Parisien.
While welcoming the demise of horse butchers in the capital, she said recent films made by animal rights group L214 “denying the conditions of slaughter in horse abattoirs” had taken a toll.
Besides, less meat was good for the planet, she said. “We know that livestock farming releases huge amounts of greenhouse gases,” she told the capital’s daily newspaper.
But there has been a political backlash against butcher bashing in France recently.
In early December, a new rural coalition kicked off their campaign for next year’s European election by blasting the “anti-human extremism” of animal rights activists and environmentalists.
“If things go on like this, yes [fishermen] be able to put an earthworm on their kidney?” asked leader Willy Schraen.
“Are we going to be able to grill a rib steak? Will we be able to ride a horse, hunt or make a fire in the fireplace? I’m not so sure. We are here to tell the [French] administrative and technological Europeans to honor us.”
Fabien Roussel, national secretary of the French Communist Party, has recently seen a surge in popularity as he tries to end guilt tripping the French working classes over what they eat after a Green MP to say that barbecues were for “machos” and bad for the planet. .
“A good wine, a good piece of meat, a good cheese: for me this is French gastronomy,” he announced before last year’s presidential election.
Despite his detractors, Mr. Lebanon is now a soldier. But when he finally hangs up his butcher’s apron, one thing’s for sure, like his retired rival, he’ll be taking his wooden horse rust with him.
“I’m definitely not leaving it here,” he said.
