Standing behind the counter in a blue checkered shirt and white apron, Jacques Leban wields his cleaver with precision as he offers a custom cut to an aging customer.
As one commentator put it, with the sparkle in her eyes, she looks like a timeless Parisian character straight out of the movie Amélie.
In fact, Mr Leban is the last remaining horse butcher in the French capital and his business is in its final stages.
“Sometimes you can find horse meat in the markets, but I am the last horse butcher in the capital,” says Mr. Leban, who has a “knight extra” label on his back next to rows of red wines.
For more than half a century, Mr. Leban has been serving everything from horse ribeye to cervelas (or sausages) to loyal customers at his shop on Rue Cambronne in western Paris.
At night, a wooden horse head illuminated with pink neon makes the front of the store hard to miss.
When it started, the French capital boasted 300 “boucheries chevaline”. There’s only one now, and as an 80-year-old, the owner is incompetent.
“I had it too. I’m completely on my own. I’m being treated like an assassin because I sell horse meat,” exclaims Mr. Leban, who will soon retire without a successor. The butcher has been subjected to insults, threats by animal rights activists in recent years and has fake blood smeared in his shop.
Its only rival in Paris, Davin, a family-owned company in the 14th arrondissement and the largest company in the capital, was recently sold and transferred. They also took three wooden horse busts with them. The new owner has no regrets about giving up horse meat.
“The horse is finished. Mentalities have changed,” he told Le Parisien.
Mr. Leban can still remember a time when horse meat was fashionable. “Forty years ago, there were four horse butchers in our neighborhood alone. At that time, four beats were delivered every week. Now it’s just one and a little,” he says.
As for the customer base, “fewer customers are buying horse meat. “It’s mostly elderly people,” he admits.
They are a loyal bunch; Regulars praise his professionalism and the quality of the lean meat, with one exclaiming: “It’s all meat and no tendons. The quality of the horse meat is excellent and great for your health! I often go out of my way to buy it.”
Another swore it helped lower cholesterol and strengthened anemia sufferers.
He is mentioned glowingly in the Gault Millau dining guide.
“The animals come from Meaux and are carefully selected and prepared using traditional methods, so they are always reliable. Cervelas, mortadella and horse sausage are all produced by a qualified supplier. Jacques Leban is an equestrian expert and we are sure of that.”
However, times are changing according to the exact figures of the Ministry of Agriculture. Approximately 20,000 horses were slaughtered for meat in France in 2013.
Last year, this figure dropped to just 3,882. According to Stéphane Lajoie, president of the French National Horse Union, “by 2021 there were only 250 horse butchers in all of France”.
All the slaughterhouses that supplied horse butchers in Paris have disappeared.
In a broader trend, the capital has lost a third of the number of butchers of all types in the past 20 years, according to Paris urban planning agency Apur. Factors include butchers retiring and being unable to find buyers, competition from supermarket butchers and mad cow disease.
Horse butchers, on the other hand, have faced a series of scandals, including one in which horse meat was sold like beef. Debates regarding the pet status of horses have also come to the fore again, especially with the campaigns led by the Brigitte Bardot Foundation.
“There is a growing awareness of meat, especially horse meat,” Amandine Paz, co-founder of PAZ, a leading animal protection organization in Paris, told Le Parisien.
Welcoming the imminent disappearance of horse butchers in the capital, he said recent films made by animal rights group L214 “condemning slaughter conditions in horse slaughterhouses” had negative consequences.
He also added that less meat is good for the planet. “We know that livestock farming emits large amounts of greenhouse gases,” he told the capital’s daily newspaper.
However, recently there has been a political backlash against attacks on butchers in France.
In early December, a new rural alliance launched its campaign for next year’s European elections by criticizing the “anti-human extremism” of animal rights activists and ecologists.
“If things continue like this [fishermen] Can they get a worm on their hook?” asked leader Willy Schraen.
“Will we be able to grill a ribeye? Will we be able to ride a horse, will we be able to hunt, will we be able to light a fire on the stove? I’m not so sure. We’re here to tell you.” [French] “We want the management and European technocrats to respect us.”
Communist leader Fabien Roussel recently saw his popularity soar after a Green MP said barbecues were bad for “machos” and bad for the planet, calling for an end to making working-class French people feel guilty about what they eat.
“A good wine, a good piece of meat, a good cheese: for me, this is French gastronomy,” he said before last year’s presidential election.
Despite his critics, Mr. Lebanon is moving on for now. But when he finally hangs up his butcher’s apron, one thing is certain: Like his retired rival, he will take the wooden horse bust with him.
“I’m definitely not going to leave him here,” he said.