A cheeky Breton has given a humorous twist to France's serious butter shortage with an online ad offering to sell his "tartine" - a sliced baguette smeared with butter, reports The Telegraph.
“Tartine for sale smeared in real demi-sel (salted) Breton butter, bought just a week ago,” read the ad, posted on the country’s most popular classified website, Le Bon Coin, along with a photo of the piece of bread priced at five euros.
“I stress that the tartine has been toasted. But I did wait for it to cool before applying the butter,” continued the advertisement that quickly went viral.
The vendor later admitted to French radio that it was a joke aimed at highlighting the severe butter shortages causing concern for consumers, supermarket chains and bakeries across the country.
Some supermarket shelves are sitting empty, and the price of pastries in the land that gave the world the croissant, is rising.
The shortage, resulting from a decrease in milk production and rise in global demand, comes as butter enjoys a comeback following research suggesting that saturated fats - long linked to heart disease - are not as harmful as once thought.
Bakers of goods like croissants, in which butter makes up around a quarter of the content, have been grappling with a doubling of butter prices in the past year, hitting record levels of above six euros per kilo.
Stephane Travert, Minister of Agriculture, on Tuesday sought to play down suggestions that the shortage could soon become acute, saying it would soon be over, urging retailers and suppliers to agree price adjustments in order to maintain deliveries.