[Carnyx]

Pork soup becomes political in France
By ELAINE GANLEY
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

PARIS -- Pig's tail, pig's feet and other pig parts, all tossed into a pot with turnips, carrots and onions. Perfumed with smoked bacon and served steaming hot. Delicious!

But there's trouble brewing in this broth.

Small groups linked to the extreme right are ladling pork soup to France's homeless. Critics and some officials denounce the charity as discriminatory: because it contains pork, the soup is off-limits for Muslims.

[...]

Pork soup is an age-old staple of the rural heartland from which all the French, at least in the national imagination, are said to spring.

[...]

The groups dishing up the soup say their victuals are no more than traditional French cuisine and deny they are serving up a message of racial hatred - a crime in France - or that they would refuse soup to a hungry Muslim or Jew.

In Strasbourg, pork soup was banned this month after officials deemed it could disrupt public order.

"Schemes with racial subtexts must be denounced," said a statement by Strasbourg Mayor Fabienne Keller.

More than a dozen police surrounded volunteers at a recent soup distribution at Paris' Montparnasse train station. Once police determined there was pork in the broth, they ordered the 10-gallon container sealed because the group had no permit.

[...]

Many of the homeless lining up for pork soup seemed oblivious to the debate.

"All associations in Paris give out ham or bacon. It's like roast beef in Britain," said 45-year-old former farm worker Daniel, who declined to give his last name.

source

Wow, I wasn't aware of the existence of Muslim/Jewish homeless...