No to the beheading of animals at the Lesmont festival!
We have been informed by a whistle-blower of the annual goose neck “game” at the Lesmont festival in the Aube region. While the 2025 program has yet to be unveiled, we call on the village to abandon this tradition, which is cruel to animals and deleterious to spectators -including minors- who are encouraged to cheer for the worst violence.
It’s not just in the Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes region that geese, hens, ducks and rabbits are killed before having their bodies decapitated to “entertain” the gallery. In 2015, the Lesmont patron saint’s festival, in the Grand-Est region, saw fit to conclude its festive weekend with bloodshed. What better way to end on a high note than to blindfold yourself and slit the throat of an animal put to death for the occasion? In 2024, although the event was renamed Lesmont’s Festival in 2017, nothing had changed: the “goose neck” was still on the program, slipped discreetly between two concerts.
Festivities marred by barbarism
Under the pretext of tradition, we should continue, year after year, to mutilate corpses? Even if it means inculcating in young people, whether they are encouraged to applaud or participate, that the lives of animals have no value, and that empathy is a quality they must discard? The perfect recipe for making our society even more violent…
We will never cease to denounce this practice, as we did in Beaux, in the Haute-Loire region, and then in Arfeuilles, in the Allier region. At the end of summer 2023, our investigative images of the Saint-Bonnet-Près-Riom patron saint’s festival, together with our complaint against the organizers, led to its cancellation in the village in 2024. We call on the Lesmont events committee to abandon this morbid custom too.
For the geese, rabbits, chickens and ducks targeted every year, sign our petition to demand the abolition of this practice throughout France.
Illustration photo from our images at Saint-Bonnet-Près-Riom in 2023
Victory! Thanks to our mobilization, no animal will be killed or decapitated to entertain spectators at the Lesmont festival this summer.
It’s the end of the “goose neck” game in this village. In response to our publication and the many signatures gathered across France by our petition calling for the abandonment of this disturbing practice, the events committee launched a consultation to decide its future. Despite a majority of votes in favor of maintaining it, it was the town hall that finally had the last word on March 31, issuing a decree banning “the tradition of the ‘goose neck’ with the corpse of an animal.” We salute this courageous decision and the advent of a festive event where empathy can finally regain its rights! This is a major step forward, both for the animals and for the children and teenagers exposed to these barbaric demonstrations. Protecting them and teaching them compassion will always be among our priorities. Our society has everything to gain.
We would like to thank the whistle-blowers, without whose information and testimony we would not have been able to win this battle, whether in Lesmont this year or in Saint-Bonnet-près-Riom in 2024. Their commitment to our cause is invaluable. May they rest assured that their anonymity will always be preserved.
And for geese, rabbits, ducks and hens, for generations to come, we’ll fight until there is a total national ban on the “goose neck” game.