Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
PRESS
May 12, 2026
Los Angeles Times
In late February, animal rights activists flew a drone over a calf ranch in the Central Valley and watched as workers kicked and punched the animals. Footage reviewed by The Times shows a worker pulling a calf by the nose with pliers.
PRESS
May 12, 2026
Los Angeles Times
TOP PRESS
January 30, 2024
The Guardian
If successful in Berkeley, a liberal San Francisco Bay Area town that’s often been at the forefront of US environmental policy, the method can be replicated elsewhere, [activists] say. “We can pave the path to abolishing factory farming,” said Cassie King, an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, one of the groups that pushed for the measure.
TOP PRESS
January 30, 2024
The Guardian
PRESS
January 29, 2024
Politico
Direct Action Everywhere and other organizations hoped for statewide action with a bill in 2022 but it never got out of committee. Their argument, then as now in Sonoma County, is that concentrated animal feeding operations are inhumane, bad for the environment and a potential threat to public health.
PRESS RELEASE
January 27, 2024
Playing with characters and plot elements from the new film Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget, the protest featured “Zoe Rosenbird” coming to the rescue of sick, injured chickens and transforming the operation that tortured them into an animal sanctuary.
PRESS RELEASE
January 27, 2024
PRESS
January 19, 2024
World Animal News
“Substantial prejudicial and reversible error occurred in Hsiung’s trial,” said Animal Activist Legal Defense Project Staff Attorney Chris Carraway, who will represent Hsiung on appeal. “Stunningly, Judge Passaglia prohibited the jury from knowing the full scope of animal cruelty at these companies, as well as the activists’ extensive efforts to obtain law enforcement of animal cruelty laws. Thus, Hsiung was unable to explain the intent behind his actions–a crucial element of the alleged crimes."
PRESS
January 19, 2024
World Animal News
PRESS
January 18, 2024
Unchained TV
If his appeal is successful, Hsiung’s ordeal could ultimately establish case law for the right to rescue factory farmed animals who are injured, neglected and suffering.
PRESS
January 18, 2024
Unchained TV
PRESS
January 16, 2024
Daily Californian
“I will never regret saving an animal's life and getting them medical care,” Rosenberg said. “Obviously, the charges are scary in a lot of ways, but I think my freedom is a small price to pay in the grand scheme of things and it's been so worth it to be able to see these animals experience freedom for the first time.”
PRESS
January 16, 2024
Daily Californian
PRESS
January 14, 2024
Daily Meal
Unfortunately, the near complete removal of battery cages from Costco's supply chain does not mean hens are reared in humane conditions. Videos recorded by a network of animal rights activists, Direct Action Everywhere, at a chicken farm that supplied eggs for Costco's Kirkland brand showed appalling conditions. The barn the animals were kept in was filthy, and dead and rotting birds littered the floor. Many living chickens also bore injuries associated with the increased aggression the animals display in cage-free systems.
PRESS
January 12, 2024
Press Democrat
“When we talk to voters, they are shocked to hear that there are farms confining hundreds of thousands of animals, many in terrible condition, right in their own county,” [spokesperson Samantha] Faye said in an email. “Small family farms cannot compete with these industrial farms because factory farms externalize their costs onto animals, society, and the environment."
PRESS
January 12, 2024
Press Democrat
PRESS
January 4, 2024
Reuters
Wayne Hsiung, who earned his J.D. from the University of Chicago Law School, is in the vanguard of a legal movement that seeks to establish “animal personhood,” affording non-human creatures greater legal standing in the eyes of the law.
PRESS
January 4, 2024
Reuters
TOP PRESS
February 14, 2023
New York Times
In any context other than factory farming, treating animals the way we see chickens treated in the Foster Farms slaughterhouse videos would be considered blatant cruelty. Many would also consider it cruel to stand by while someone else handled animals this way. “If there’s someone in my neighborhood watching me boil birds alive, we’d say this is monstrous behavior,” Wayne Hsiung, a founder of DxE, told me.
TOP PRESS
February 9, 2023
San Francisco Chronicle
The message the pigs conveyed in the gas chamber footage is clear: They are in extreme pain, and they want to live. You don’t need the Agriculture Department to tell you that. You can see and hear it for yourself.
TOP PRESS
February 2, 2023
New York Times
“It was horrible cruelty to the pigs inside the chambers,” Jim Reynolds told me. “It’s a violation of federal law.” Reynolds is one of 90 veterinarians who signed an open letter saying that the process shown in the videos probably violates federal law on humane slaughter.
TOP PRESS
January 18, 2023
Wired
Animal rights activists have captured the first hidden-camera video from inside a carbon dioxide “stunning chamber” in a US meatpacking plant.
TOP PRESS
October 25, 2022
Vox
The pigs’ essentially zero value is baked into the meat industry’s business model... 15 percent of piglets die before they’re finished weaning. The pork industry may slaughter over 125 million pigs a year, but they breed far more, knowing many will die from disease and injury.
TOP PRESS
October 18, 2022
New York Times
During the closing statements in the trial, in which I represented myself, I told jurors that a not-guilty verdict would encourage corporations to treat animals under their care with more compassion and make governments more open to animal cruelty complaints.
TOP PRESS
October 11, 2022
Democracy Now!
In a major victory for animal rights, a jury in Utah has acquitted two animal rights activists who each faced up to five and a half years of prison time for rescuing two sick piglets from Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms, one of the world’s largest pig farms.
TOP PRESS
October 8, 2022
The Intercept
“Whenever I think about the condition Lily was in and the desperation we felt when we saw her there, struggling and so small and so sick, a little baby in such a horrible, awful, brutal place,” Hsiung said in a video posted to Instagram, “we just wanted to get her out.” Animal rescue “is not the worst part of us as human beings. It’s the best of us.”
TOP PRESS
October 8, 2022
New York Times
Many animal welfare advocates viewed the trial as a display of corporate power, and a test of whether the meat industry can legally prevent the public from seeing the sometimes unsavory aspects of modern mass food production.
BLOG
July 14, 2026
The prosecutorial viewpoint seems to be at odds with a growing public expectation that animals raised for food should not be left to suffer — and aggressive marketing (in this case, “humanewashing”) often deceives consumers into thinking they’re making the right purchasing choices.
BLOG
May 28, 2026
The elephant seals at Año Nuevo are dying because they share beaches with infected seabirds — infected because H5N1 has become endemic in wild bird populations worldwide, a spread driven in significant part by the concentration and global trade of farmed poultry.
BLOG
May 20, 2026
Deputies testified that they never investigated the animal cruelty allegations at the dairy or referred them to any agency, despite being told about dead and suffering animals on site. One officer even defended the facility by claiming that “you can go to any dairy, anywhere in the country, and there will be dead goats there.”
BLOG
April 22, 2026
Open rescue as a strategy is not just about getting a few animals out of their cages, it is also about creating a crisis that can no longer be ignored. It is about forcing the public and people in power to choose a side.
BLOG
March 19, 2026
The dairy industry trade group's CEO, Anja Raudabaugh, spread blatant lies about animal rights activists on a recent podcast discussing DxE's latest project, FactoryFarmWatch.org. This blog corrects the record and invites Ms. Raudabaugh to engage in an honest and transparent conversation.
BLOG
February 19, 2026
Factory Farm Watch is more than a map. It is a launchpad for statewide action to end factory farming.
BLOG
February 6, 2026
A summary of the first annual Animal Liberation Conference in India, co-hosted by DxE and Indore Animal Liberation
BLOG
January 4, 2026
I think the public has made it resoundingly clear that they feel Perdue should be prosecuted for its crimes. I hope you'll take that into consideration and use your power as a judge to do some good for these animals.
BLOG
December 18, 2025
No prosecution, conviction, or sentence, will ever stop a movement driven by compassion and care.
PRESS RELEASE
September 5, 2026
Protesters entered the store with signs reading “Someone Not Something” and “Stop Selling Animals,” as well as trash cans overflowing with plush parakeets, rubber snakes, and rubber mice to represent how Petco treats animals like trash, based on images from multiple recent investigations of breeders that sell to Petco.
PRESS RELEASE
August 25, 2026
The ruling comes in response to a filing earlier this month detailing evidence of significant animal cruelty at the dairy. The judge also ordered that the District Attorney’s office disclose evidence of DA Sarah Hacker’s relationship with the owners of the dairy farm property involved in the prosecution against these animal rescuers.
PRESS RELEASE
August 22, 2026
The protest featured a 10-foot-tall milk carton prop modeled after Meyenberg packaging, but with an image of the dead pile of goats documented at Meyenberg’s Vera Goat Dairy and with red streamers symbolizing the animals’ blood flowing out from the top of the carton.
PRESS RELEASE
August 11, 2026
Today, defense attorneys for four goat rescuers charged in Kings County filed evidence with the court of animal cruelty at the Whole Foods-supplying goat dairy at the heart of the case. They have submitted a motion requesting that Judge Jim Trevino reduce the felony charges to misdemeanors.
PRESS RELEASE
July 27, 2026
Factory farm investigators with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) used drones to document cruel handling of calves at 140 Cattle Co., a calf-raising operation linked to Hilmar Cheese Company, one of the largest cheese producers in the U.S.
PRESS RELEASE
July 18, 2026
Activists first protested silently next to the animals on display inside Petco in San Rafael, and then loudly outside the store, urging Petco to end the retail sale of animals at all locations.
PRESS RELEASE
June 30, 2026
Direct Action Everywhere Los Angeles campaigned to urge the grocery chain to cut ties with Meyenberg, after the group’s investigation at a Meyenberg dairy exposed emaciated, ill goats and an illegal dead pile
PRESS RELEASE
June 22, 2026
A DxE drone investigation released in May shows calves kicked in the face, yanked by their tails, and disbudded with hot irons at Agresti Calf Ranch in Stanislaus County. The facility is owned by the Agresti-Assali family which also owns the adjacent Clover Sonoma milk supplier Double D Dairies. DxE investigators witnessed calves from Double D Dairies being transported to Agresti Calf Ranch.
PRESS RELEASE
June 20, 2026
With Bay Area cities moving to ban the retail sale of animals, animal rights activists with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) are turning up the pressure on one of the Bay’s biggest pet retailers: Petco. Dozens of activists with DxE, PETA, and other groups protested inside and outside Petco in San Mateo Saturday afternoon.
