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French Farmers Flock To Parisian Protest

As if the herds of tourists weren't enough: French farmers feeling fleeced by fuel costs and falling prices took their flocks to the Champ de Mars yesterday to plead their case for a government bailout.

This week, officials passed a $316 million (€250 million) package to help farmers, one fifth of which would be shorn off for sheep farmers and breeders specifically. But reps for the sheep breeders union say it's not enough to combat the effects of the economic downturn on the farmers, who pull down an average salary of $10,000 a year.

For visitors to the Eiffel Tower, which sits on the Champ de Mars, the herd of sheep probably wasn't the biggest concern: It was the estimated 800 farmers who attended the protest that probably made Paris' most distinctive landmark especially wild and wooly.

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