When protesting hen factories gets festive (France)

30th Apr 2026

Residents of Celle-Lévescault, a village in Western France, and supporting organisations gathered on 25th of April in the hamlet of Vaugeton for a festive, family-friendly and determined rally in front of a factory farm construction site.

Their aim: to draw attention to the illegal start of work on the intensive livestock project involving 150,000 laying hens. The construction site in Vaugeton is being run illegally by the NÉRAULT family, who have owned the Pampr’oeuf egg factories in Pamproux for over 40 years.

Protesters responded to this obstinacy in their own way, gathering in the sunshine in a spirit of family and joy. At the end of a march along the road, which had been transformed into a dance floor, they left behind a large pothole and a barrier to block the passage of lorries. And as nothing is achieved on an empty stomach, crêpes were served to the marchers.

Egg barons steeped in scandal

Pampr’oeuf corporation produced 865 million eggs and generated a turnover of 265 million euros in 2020, accounting for 15% of the French market. But above all, the NÉRAULT family has made its fortune by keeping 800,000 hens in cages at Pamproux every year, under appalling rearing conditions, as documented by the L214 association in 2021. Although these factories have been partly sold to the TERRENA cooperative, industrialist Stéphane NÉRAULT still owns the farms that supply poultry to the Pamproux factories: 3,000 hectares of cereal crops and two private mega-ponds.

Clément NÉRAULT (son of Stéphane NÉRAULT) and Didier RIQUET are now spearheading this project for a new factory in Vaugeton, on which work has begun illegally. This new-generation factory farm (where the hens are no longer kept in cages but will be crammed onto metal scaffolding, still without straw and without access to veterinary care, the outdoors or daylight) is being set up on the site of the RIQUET family’s former goat farm, a farm well known for having once been the largest in Europe (4,000 goats) and where the ‘scrapie’ crisis in 2002 led to 2,500 animals being sent for slaughter as a precautionary measure.

These factory farms run by the NÉRAULT and RIQUET families symbolise a form of wealth accumulation disconnected from living things. A capitalist agricultural model which needs to be fought!

A brief recap of historical facts concerning the NÉRAULT family’s Pampr’oeuf factories:

July 2002: fire in a henhouse: 180,000 hens perished in the blaze.
August 2017: 5 tonnes of eggs contaminated with fipronil (an antiparasitic pesticide) were recalled.
December 2021: NGO L214 accused the company of animal cruelty.
February 2023: avian influenza; 285,090 laying hens from a single shed were culled. This was a national record!
October 2024: suspected salmonella outbreak; 2.8 million eggs were recalled
October 2025: 15,000 m³ of poultry droppings caught fire and burned for 12 days in a shed. To put out the fire, the operator moved 4,000 m³ of droppings to a plot of land situated within a drinking water catchment protection zone. A public health scandal!

NO to the Vaugeton chicken factory! Yes to resistance!