France, Land of Croissants, Finds Butter Vanishing From Shelves<br />Always butter!” but Professor Pitte said France had moved past the butter-heavy style of cooking popularized in the United States by Julia Child.<br />In France alone, butter consumption increased 5 percent from 2013 to 2015, according to<br />a recent report by an umbrella organization for France’s dairy industry, Le Cniel.<br />“So yes, we are inevitably affected, and have been for several months now.”<br />Jean-Robert Pitte, a geographer and gastronomy specialist at the Sorbonne University in Paris, said<br />that France had traditionally been split between a butter-dominated north and an olive oil-using south, but those divisions had broken down.<br />“The absence of certain products on shelves is an indicator of tensions between some large retailers and their suppliers,” the Cniel said in its report, noting<br />that many retailers were refusing to pay the increased market price for butter.<br />“When I was little, there was hardly any olive oil in Paris,” Professor Pitte said.<br />Last year, France consumed about 18 pounds of butter per capita, according to statistics from a coming report by the International Dairy Federation.
