Farmers Want Depardieu Disinfected

March 15 -- Has French actor Gerard Depardieu's personal hygiene gotten so bad that even farmers are protesting? Well, not quite.

But farmers in Norway want the portly star of such films as Cyrano de Bergerac, Vatel, and 102 Dalmatians to be disinfected before entering their country — to prevent the spread of foot-and-mouth disease.

Reuters reports that Norwegian farmers are terrified of an outbreak of the highly contagious disease that has already hit livestock in Britain and France. They want Depardieu and the actors and film crew of I Am Dina, which is being filmed in a rural area of northern Norway, to be disinfected — although what that involves, we don't know.

"Depardieu will be traveling back and forth between Bodoe [Norway] and Paris several times in the spring and summer. Will he be disinfected every time?" one farmer asked.

Farmers Oddbjoern and Astrid Olsen, whose farm borders the film set at Kjerringoey, fear that their son, who has been an extra on the set, will infect their livestock. "Yesterday our eldest son came home after trying out costumes for the film company. … Now we're refusing to let our son go into the barn," they complained to the Norwegian daily Nordlands Framtid.

Norway closed its borders to imports of European Union meat and products on Wednesday in a bid to stop the spread of the dreaded disease into the country, Reuters reports.