Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
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TOP PRESS
October 24, 2025
The Guardian
I asked Rosenberg what outcome she was hoping for. “My ideal outcome is honestly just whatever is best for the animals,” she said. “An acquittal wouldn’t set an actual legal precedent, but it would set a social precedent, to some extent, and send an important message.”
TOP PRESS
October 24, 2025
The Guardian
PRESS
October 30, 2025
Los Angeles Times
“These charges carry a potential sentence of nearly 5 years in jail,” DxE said in a statement. “Meanwhile, Petaluma Poultry faces no consequences for leaving sick animals to die or scalding animals alive.”
PRESS
October 30, 2025
Los Angeles Times
TOP PRESS
October 29, 2025
The New York Times
The four chickens she took with her — whom she named Poppy, Ivy, Aster and Azalea — are alive at a sanctuary for rescued farm animals, she said. “I will not apologize for taking sick, neglected animals to get medical care,” Ms. Rosenberg said in a statement. “When we see cruelty and violence, we can choose to ignore it or to intervene and try to make the world a better place.”
TOP PRESS
October 29, 2025
The New York Times
PRESS
October 29, 2025
The Guardian
“Sonoma county spent over six weeks and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to protect a multibillion-dollar corporation from the rescue of four chickens worth less than $25,” Chris Carraway, Rosenberg’s attorney, said in a statement.
PRESS
October 29, 2025
The Guardian
PRESS
October 29, 2025
KQED
When asked on the stand last week if she wants open rescue “to be something that happens everywhere,” Rosenberg told prosecutors: “Yes.” Rosenberg’s defense team is expected to appeal, creating the opportunity to set a legal precedent for the practice.
PRESS
October 29, 2025
KQED
TOP PRESS
October 29, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
But even if the appellate court doesn’t reverse Rosenberg’s conviction, she likely won’t regret having risked prison time to force a trial. Her trial, by some measures, was still a success. Several national publications — including The New York Times and the Associated Press — covered it, raising awareness of DxE’s goal to eradicate America’s factory-farming industry by 2040.
TOP PRESS
October 29, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
PRESS
October 29, 2025
The Press Democrat
“Even if the verdict was good, it would still be disappointing, because still no one is lifting a single finger to look at the allegations of criminal animal cruelty at Petaluma Poultry,” Carraway said. “Unfortunately, at the end of the day, there was more concern about talking about protests Zoe did when she was 14 years old than actually the much worse crimes that are happening day in, day out at Petaluma Poultry.”
PRESS
October 29, 2025
The Press Democrat
TOP PRESS
October 28, 2025
The Associated Press
A California animal rights activist on trial for taking four chickens from one of Perdue Farms’ major poultry plants said Tuesday that she was rescuing Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea from abuse while prosecutors say she broke the law.
TOP PRESS
October 28, 2025
The Associated Press
PRESS
October 28, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
During his closing argument in a Sonoma County trial that could reverberate throughout America’s animal rights movement, Deputy District Attorney Matt Hobson seized several opportunities to stress something that should have seemed obvious: The defendant — not animal agriculture — is on trial here. His need to reiterate that point Tuesday spoke to the unique nature of this case.
PRESS
October 28, 2025
San Francisco Chronicle
PRESS
October 28, 2025
The Press Democrat
Hobson also questioned why Rosenberg took only four chickens if her goal was to save animals. Carraway countered that rescuing even a few birds could still raise awareness about animal cruelty.
PRESS
October 28, 2025
The Press Democrat
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
Videos shared with The Intercept prior to the report’s public release show, among other scenes, lambs with their throats slit hanging upside down and thrashing on the slaughter line; one animal with an internal organ that has been torn inside-out and left dangling behind it as it heads to slaughter; injured lambs being led to slaughter; workers laughing, spanking animals, and engaging in simulated sex acts with nearby machinery as lambs are having their throats slit; and the apparent use of so-called Judas sheep — adult sheep kept alive at the facility and used to lead the young sheep to slaughter.
TOP PRESS
August 30, 2024
San Francisco Chronicle
In dimly lit indoor aisles at Weber Family Farms in Petaluma, hundreds of thousands of white chickens live out their 90 weeks of life. They fly from perch to perch. They dust bathe in the bedding. They nip at water dispensers. They lay egg after egg. And they never leave. These barns are at the heart of a bitter fight that Mike Weber and Samantha Faye are waging for the future of local farming.
TOP PRESS
April 4, 2024
Los Angeles Times
Lewis Bernier, an animal rights activist supporting the initiative, said he has visited several factory farms across the country, documenting inhumane treatment, and one farm in Sonoma County stands out as having “the worst and most systemic animal cruelty that I’ve ever seen.”
TOP PRESS
March 15, 2024
The New Yorker
Instead of planning actions, many activists now spend their time litigating microaggressions and small disputes within their ranks... As a response, [DxE co-founder Wayne] Hsiung has tried to promote a maxim of "braver spaces, not safer spaces," which encourages the animal rights community to put aside their individual concerns, if possible, and do things like risk felony jail time for the cause.
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
November 9, 2023
Vox
Hsiung’s trial and conviction show the extraordinary difficulty of trying to discuss what happens to animals on factory farms in a legal system that only sees them as property. At both factory farms in this case, DxE had documented gruesome conditions prior to their open rescue actions and had submitted animal cruelty complaints to authorities (though no action was taken by legal officials, King said). Yet it was the activists, not the farm owners, who were criminally charged and had to explain themselves to a jury.
TOP PRESS
November 8, 2023
Wired
For the first time, guerrilla animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere reveals a guide to its investigative tactics and toolkit, from spy cams to night vision and drones. Bernier says that DxE decided to publicly release its guide, even in the wake of Hsiung’s conviction, to help activists who are already committed to carrying out covert investigations do their work more safely and effectively.
TOP PRESS
November 4, 2023
The Intercept
Hsiung’s defense was in many ways stymied from the jump. The judge barred almost all photo and video evidence of animal cruelty from the trial, as has been the case in a number of previous DxE trials. As I’ve previously noted, the decision to disallow such evidence is usually made to benefit a defendant — not showing gruesome images of a murder victim, for example. Such logic has been flipped in DxE cases, including Hsiung’s most recent, to the benefit of powerful agribusiness.
TOP PRESS
August 7, 2023
National Geographic
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...
BLOG
August 7, 2019
BLOG
July 5, 2019
BLOG
December 14, 2018
PRESS RELEASE
June 4, 2025
Describing the requested gag order as “overbroad and vague by any constitutional standard,” Judge Gnoss noted that Ms. Rosenberg’s critics, too, had participated in public discussion about her case, pointing by way of example to a statement by Bill Mattos, President of the California Poultry Federation, describing Ms. Rosenberg’s rescue of four chickens as a “terrorist act.”
PRESS RELEASE
May 27, 2025
Tuesday's rescue follows a months-long investigation into Vera Goat Dairy by DxE earlier this year, which found that dozens of dead mother and baby goats are regularly dumped into an illegal dead pile on the property, indicating that the operation is experiencing high rates of mortality.
PRESS RELEASE
May 24, 2025
Approximately 200 activists with the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) marched through downtown Petaluma Saturday afternoon in support of animal liberation and the right to rescue animals from abuse. They began at Penry Park and weaved through downtown including past diners at restaurants along the riverfront. Along the way, they chanted, delivered speeches, and handed out educational information to the public about Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse.
PRESS RELEASE
May 23, 2025
While the truck was stopped, three activists opened one of the many large crates holding chickens on the trailer and identified and removed two chickens with visible wounds. They took the chickens to get immediate medical care and shared footage of the rescue publicly, openly showing their faces.
PRESS RELEASE
May 19, 2025
Over the weekend, animal rights activists with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) held protests across Sonoma County to elevate animal cruelty at Petaluma Poultry, a subsidiary of national poultry giant Perdue Foods. On Sunday, they delivered their message to Sonoma County District Attorney Carla Rodriguez with a protest outside her home in Windsor, urging her to finally prosecute Petaluma Poultry for documented criminal animal cruelty.
PRESS RELEASE
May 13, 2025
Free speech experts say that Perdue’s lawsuit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP suit, intended to silence activists, burden them with legal fees, and intimidate them from protesting. California's anti-SLAPP statute was passed to enable defendants to quickly dismiss meritless lawsuits targeting protected activities.
PRESS RELEASE
May 4, 2025
Direct Action Everywhere activists protest dozens of Trader Joe’s stores across the country asking the retailer to cut ties with Perdue’s California subsidiary, Petaluma Poultry, given documented animal abuse
PRESS RELEASE
March 29, 2025
“I want to know why Trader Joe’s is continuing to support Perdue’s animal cruelty and endangering consumers,” said Conrad de Jesus, an Oakland resident who participated in the protest. “They’ve seen the evidence of sick and injured animals languishing without medical care at Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry. It’s time they cut ties with this awful company.”
PRESS RELEASE
March 22, 2025
A handful of counter-protesters showed up with a Trump flag and a cardboard sign reading “Eat chicken.” They heckled the speakers and disrupted photos by standing in front of the photographers.
