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Gingerbread instead of fast food: Russian regions declare a war on McDonald’s

“It is necessary to close all McDonald’s restaurants in Russia so that our children do not get poisoned with fountain drinks and pickled cucumbers,” an activist says

© EPA/ANDY RAIN

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MOSCOW, April 11. /ITAR-TASS/. Several Russian regions held protest actions against American fast food on Friday. The protesters called for closing McDonald’s fast food restaurants In Russia and refrain from opening the new ones.

Anti-fast food pickets were set up in Vladimir, Krasnodar, Petrozavodsk and other cities across Russia.

“Any gastroenterologist would tell you that fast food is poisoning. It is necessary to close all McDonald’s restaurants in Russia so that our children do not get poisoned with fountain drinks and pickled cucumbers,” Valery Puzanov, a participant in the action in Vladimir, 200 kilometers to the east of Moscow, told ITAR-TASS.

To demonstrate his hatred of the fast food, Puzanov went to a local McDonald’s restaurant, bought a children’s lunch, poured it out on a wax cloth and trampled it down with his feet.

“You have left Crimea - Get Out of Bryansk!”, “Down with American Fast Food!”, “Go Home!”, that was what anti-McDonald’s activists in Bryansk, a city located 379 kilometers southwest of Moscow, said as they demonstrated outside the local shopping mall.

In Ivanovo, a regional Duma deputy, Roman Yefremov, announced a contest for the best public action against McDonald’s. He wants to call public attention to healthy food.

Yefremov told Itar-Tass that he had already started receiving proposals from Ivanovo residents. The winner to be named next week will get 10 tickets to cinema in reward.

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In Tambov, the local residents wrote a letter to Governor Oleg Betin with a request to stop the construction of a McDonald’s restaurant under their windows in the city’s north. However, the local administration had already given permission to its construction, Vitaly Chislin, the head of the Tambov architectural committee, told ITAR-TASS.

On April 4, McDonald’s temporary stopped its operations in Crimea.

“Due to production reasons independent of the company, McDonald’s has suspended its operations in Simferopol, Sevastopol and Yalta,” the company said in a statement, noting it hopes to resume the work of its restaurants in Crimea as soon as possible.

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