Open rescue activists argue they have a right to rescue animals in distress. Their arguments are modeled on U.S. state laws that protect rescuers from facing civil or criminal penalties if they break a window to rescue an animal in a hot car. While many states explicitly exclude livestock from these laws, some just say 'animal' without defining the term further.
RACHEL FOBAR: In March 2017, five activists entered Circle Four Farms, an industrial pig farm in Utah owned by Smithfield Foods, one of the largest pork producers in the world. They faced the camera. They used their real names. And they posted their footage online. They also took with them two piglets. The animals—later named Lily and Lizzie—were sick and underweight, according to activist Wayne Hsiung.
However, prosecutors argued it was stealing. The FBI raided two farm animal shelters in Utah and Colorado looking for the missing pigs, and state veterinarians cut two ear clippings from a piglet’s ear for DNA testing. Prosecutors charged all five activists with felony burglary and theft charges, but by the time of the trial in 2022, two men faced up to 10 years in prison. At one point, because of an enhancement for crimes committed against animal enterprises, the two faced a sentence of up to 60 years, according to numerous press accounts.
But in a shocking twist, the jury in Washington County, Utah, sided with the activists. “They just let a guy who walked into a factory farm and took two piglets out without the consent of Smithfield walk out of the courtroom free,” Wayne Hsiung, activist and founder of the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, told reporters outside the courthouse moments after his acquittal. “If it can happen in southern Utah, it can happen anywhere.” Five months later, two California women were found not guilty of misdemeanor theft after they took two sick chickens from a Foster Farms truck bound for a slaughterhouse.
These crusaders are part of the so-called “open rescue” movement, in which animal rights activists brazenly take animals from factory farm operations. Direct Action Everywhere—better known as DxE—is at the forefront of this movement in the United States, but it was pioneered by Patty Mark, founder of the Australian nonprofit Animal Liberation Victoria, which filmed her rescue of chickens from an egg factory in the 1990s. Activists around the world have followed suit, and groups like Compassion Over Killing, Animal Protection and Rescue League, Mercy for Animals, and Compassionate Action for Animals have helped orchestrate similar U.S.-based rescue operations.
Open rescuers argue they have a right to rescue animals in distress. Their arguments are modeled on U.S. state laws that protect rescuers from facing civil or criminal penalties if they break a window to rescue an animal in a hot car. While many states explicitly exclude livestock from these laws, some just say “animal” without defining the term further. In the Smithfield trial, Hsiung compared the pigs he took with dogs in a hot car “in need of urgent care”…
Not all open rescues have been so successful—and the consequences can be severe. In 2006, activist Adam Durand spent six months in prison for criminal trespassing after he and others went into Wegmans’ egg farm in New York State to film a documentary and rescue 11 hens they believed were ill or dying.
Amber Canavan spent 30 days in jail in 2015 for entering Hudson Valley Foie Gras in New York State and removing ducks she describes as having filthy feathers, raw skin, and apparent respiratory issues, evidenced by green and brown mucus and crusty eyes. In May 2015, she graduated magna cum laude from State University of New York, and two months later, she reported to jail. “I don’t regret it,” she says. “I would have done it again.” But the experience affected her life long-term—for example, for years, she was pulled aside by TSA at the airport…
Yet while activists call it rescue, farms call it stealing. Both Smithfield, which is owned by the Hong Kong-based WH group that reported $24 billion in 2019 revenue, and Foster Farms declined to comment… In a statement after the trial, Smithfield’s vice president of corporate affairs Jim Monroe called the verdict “disappointing” and said the activists are “part of an anti-meat movement determined to undermine livestock agriculture.” He also denied animals were mistreated…
Is the goal of open rescue to end meat production? “You sound like a prosecutor,” DxE communications director Cassie King quips in response. But DxE’s goals truly are radical: Further successes “would embolden the animal rights movement and open the floodgates to more open rescues happening across the country,” King says. That’s exactly what companies are afraid of. In his statement after trial, Smithfield’s Monroe agonized that the verdict would “encourage anyone opposed to raising animals for food to vandalize farms.”
DxE aims to formalize this by passing a five-point Animal Bill of Rights: the right to freedom; the right to not be exploited, abused, or killed by humans; the right to have their interests represented in court; the right to have a protected habitat; and, finally, the right to be rescued from distress. SOURCE…
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