DxE investigator and animal rescuer Zoe Rosenberg is on trial in Sonoma County, California. She is facing years in jail for rescuing four sick and injured chickens from Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse. All media requests to record the trial have been denied, but you can follow along through these Court Watch summaries, on our Perdue Rescue Trial X account, on our Instagram, and on UnchainedTV. Check back regularly for new updates. Want to take action? Sign the petition at RightToRescue.com and share the news with your friends and family.

Monday, October 6th

Today's court session kicked off the opening statements, both from the prosecution then the defense.

Jessalee Mills spoke for the prosecution. Her opening statement focused on characterizing Zoe as an activist who flaunts and ignores the law when she doesn't like it, in order to impose her beliefs about animal liberation. Zoe and her co-conspirators, Mills says, snuck inside the Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse dressed as employees in order to go into offices, access computer filings, and stay for hours when nobody else was present on the property. And on June 13 while the slaughterhouse was operating she entered and removed four chickens, before leaving in a rental car.
She contrasts the entry to DxE protesters gathered peacefully and legally outside the slaughterhouse to protest. Mills lists a series of Sonoma county farms that she says Zoe wants to shut down - including Reichardt duck farm, Foster Farms, and Webber family farm. Although Zoe will say it's compassion, Mills says that "The evidence will leave no doubt this was not a rescue." Mills makes it clear that the prosecution sees the case as solely about what was done, not at all about why.

Kevin Little then spoke for the defense. He began by pointing out that the evidence in the case comes from the defense willingly supplying it as part of open rescue. Their reason for that is that the question of the case is not about the what, but about the why. He then explains Open Rescue, because as he says Mills misdefined it. Open Rescue, he says, is rescuing animals with good reason to believe that they were experiencing animal cruelty. Zoe only went in after proof that the slaughterhouse was disregarding animal welfare. And she only acted after alerting the sheriff's office, welfare agencies, and the DA. And she was told repeatedly that they weren't interested.
The issue that Zoe went in to ameliorate, Little continued, was an issue with the slaughter process not being set up to handle a sick chicken properly. Chickens are hung by their legs to a conveyor which first takes them to a stunning bath. A sick bird not breathing properly may not be stunned by the process, and therefore enter the next stage conscious. Next they move through a machine intended to slit their necks, but if their necks don't line up they may not be slit, and a conscious chicken will not move the same way as an unconscious one would. And so they'd go to the next stage, the scalding tank, still alive. The scalding tank is boiling water meant to loosen their feathers; but live chickens will also be boiled alive in it. Not even the industry says this should happen, says Little.
Little recaps his case: Zoe found Azalea, Ivy, Poppy, and Aster on the 13th of June. They were sick and would not successfully get through slaughter. She rescued them and they're now instead happy and healthy, with examination from vets and caretakers. The jury doesn't have to believe that she was right to do so, but that she had a good faith belief that she was. Zoe, he says, did not act criminally, she acted with good faith to prevent cruelty.

Once the opening statements were called, the prosecution called their first witness, David Arvizo, who is a deputy in the sheriff's office. He was called to the slaughterhouse on the night of the rescue, June 13. With him, they went through the events of the night - mostly him hearing about the rescue after the fact and being shown the hole in the fence. They also went through all of the security footage for each day that there was an entry on the slaughterhouse, having him lay the foundation for who it was and when.

Arvizo's testimony is not yet over. It will continue tomorrow, followed by cross examination by the defense.