‘ They wanted to burn everything, smash everything ‘. In Vénissieux, France, a bakery stops serving pork because Muslims threatened to burn the shop down

Following a dispute, a baker in Vénissieux announced that he would no longer produce pork products. Although Alexandre Dallery respects the fact that people do not eat pork, he criticised the event for being ‘too extreme’ in an interview with the newspaper ‘Le Parisien’.

He would have preferred it if the far-right had not adopted his publications. Following an altercation in his bakery in Vénissieux (Rhône), Alexandre Dallery announced on Friday that he would no longer be selling pork products. This decision was played up by the far right with Islamophobic undertones, with some of its representatives speaking of an ‘Islamised’ territory, a ‘caliphate’ or ‘Sharia law’.

Indeed, one of the shop assistants at La Verr’in Dallery Pittie, Alexandre Dallery’s bakery, had suggested a quiche with bacon cubes to two customers very early on Friday morning, as the entrepreneur told Le Parisien newspaper on Friday evening. Several minutes later, the two men returned to the restaurant ‘like furies’ and ‘very violent’ after discovering that their meal contained pork, which they had not been told was forbidden by their religion.

To avoid further mistakes, the bakery owner decided to continue his business without ‘bacon’. He said that while he understood that it could be ‘annoying’ to give Muslims a quiche with bacon, he still felt that ‘it had gone too far’. In a now-deleted comment on Facebook on Friday, Alexandre Dallery had spoken of ‘various pressure attempts for several months to produce Hallal’. Le Parisien

The two men of Muslim faith had settled down on the terrace, but ‘went into the shop, insulted us and threatened to set fire to the bakery. I was at the back baking bread, but I heard them. I immediately intervened and apologised, saying that a mistake could happen. If I hadn’t been there, they would probably have attacked my shop assistant’.

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Alexandre Dallery, an opposition councillor (LR) in Vénissieux, has decided not to press charges, but wants to denounce ‘a taboo subject’ in the town. For good reason, as he will no longer be there in two months’ time.

Following an attempted burglary, a tax audit, an audit by the Urssaf and an administrative closure in February this year for ‘serious breaches of hygiene regulations’, the baker has sold his shop in Vénissi, which alone employed 15 people.

One of these employees will soon take over the management of the business. ‘The other employees will continue to work here or with us in our other shops,’ he said.

The incident on Friday August 16 ‘was the straw that broke the camel’s back’, summarises Alexandre Dallery. Le Progrès

« Il voulait tout brûler, tout casser. » : À Vénissieux (69), une boulangerie arrête de servir du porc ; le gérant, conseiller municipal d’opposition (LR), ne déposera pas plainte – Fdesouche