Over the years, animal rights groups have gained a reputation for using confrontational tactics – such as PETAs campaign comparing meat consumption to the Holocaust. The logic is simple: it takes shock to jolt people out of complacency about animal suffering. DxE follows in this tradition; the group’s signature move has been “open rescues”, granting people criminal and civil protection if they forcibly enter a facility to remove an endangered animal. From the activists’ perspective, one virtue of the tactic is that it does not just call attention to an injustice – it attempts, in a small way, to correct it. It also targets the industry rather than implicating individual consumers, and offers a glimpse into the hidden world of animal agriculture.
On a Monday afternoon in late September, Zoe Rosenberg, a 23-year-old University of California, Berkeley, student, emerged from a courtroom in Santa Rosa, California. Flanked by her lawyers, she moved briskly through the courthouse corridors, past more than 100 prospective jurors…
It was one of the last days of jury selection for Rosenberg’s trial. She was facing two misdemeanor charges for trespassing and one for tampering with a vehicle, as well as one count of felony conspiracy. If convicted on all charges, she could spend up to four and a half years in jail.
The facts at the center of the case were not in dispute. Just past midnight on 13 June 2023, Rosenberg and several other members of the group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) drove to Petaluma Poultry, a slaughterhouse about 40 miles (64km) north of San Francisco. Disguised as workers, they encountered a truck filled with thousands of live chickens packed into crates. They removed four chickens, placed them in buckets and drove away.
These facts were not in dispute because Rosenberg and her fellow activists had subsequently released video footage of what they had done. “It’s not a whodunit,” Rosenberg’s lawyer, Chris Carraway, likes to say. “It’s a whydunit.”
After leaving the slaughterhouse, the activists examined the chickens – whom they named Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea – more thoroughly. Rosenberg says they were splattered with diarrhea and suffering from wounds and abrasions.
Carraway would explain in court that Rosenberg’s intent was not to steal the birds, but to aid them. The jurors would be asked to determine, in effect, how far compassion can go before it becomes a crime…
Already, DxE activists note, there are “right to rescue” laws in California and 13 other states granting people criminal and civil protection if they forcibly enter a motor vehicle to remove an endangered animal. Their argument is that the same principle should apply to all animals in distress.
Since 2014, according to King, members of the group have participated in about 60 such operations. In the past few years, activists have taken two piglets from a Utah factory farm; two chickens from a Foster Farms truck outside a slaughterhouse in Merced county, California; and three dogs from a breeding and research facility in Wisconsin. After removing the animals, the activists provide them with veterinary care and place them in new homes.
Over the years, animal rights groups have gained a reputation for using confrontational tactics – such as PETA’s campaign comparing meat consumption to the Holocaust or stunts that involve splattering fur with fake blood. The logic is simple: it takes shock to jolt people out of complacency about animal suffering. But the result is often the opposite: turning people off. In a society where eating meat is the norm, many see such protests as a personal attack – and feel judged, not persuaded…
DxE follows in this tradition; they have held “die-ins” outside a butcher shop in Berkeley and disrupted a Friday dinner at the beloved restaurant Chez Panisse.
But the group’s signature move has been “open rescues”. From the activists’ perspective, one virtue of the tactic is that it does not just call attention to an injustice – it attempts, in a small way, to correct it. It also targets the industry rather than implicating individual consumers, and offers a glimpse into the hidden world of animal agriculture.
“The court cases that we have are kind of a vehicle to pose the question to a randomly selected jury of our peers, and to others through the media,” said Cassie King, DxE’s communications lead. “Is it a crime, or is it the right thing to do, to rescue an animal who’s dying in a factory farm?”…
DxE’s vision is radical: their ultimate goal is total animal liberation – meaning the end of all animal agriculture. They believe animals should be categorized as “legal persons,” not property…
Radical animal rights activists are, of course, a tiny minority of the population. But they see themselves as a moral vanguard. “Over the long term, we will succeed,” Hsiung, the DxE founder, told me, “just because we have stronger arguments”…
A conviction, however, would present another opportunity: her lawyers would appeal. If the appellate court ruled in her favor, that could actually change the law, moving it in the direction of recognizing animal personhood or a “right to rescue”.
“I hope either way that this case is just able to shine a light on what these animals are experiencing every moment of their lives,” she went on. “So much of what happens in factory farms is happening behind closed doors. It’s happening in the dark. And no one ever gets to see it, no one ever gets to hear these animals’ stories”. REBECCA TUHUS-DUBROW
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