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
PRESS
May 16, 2026
San Francisco Chronicle
The Commission of Animal Control and Welfare voted unanimously Thursday to recommend that Mayor Daniel Lurie and the Board of Supervisors make it illegal to sell live animals at pet stores within city limits. Supporters said a ban would formalize a shift already underway in the city’s pet industry.
PRESS
May 16, 2026
San Francisco Chronicle
PRESS
May 16, 2026
New York Post
Animal and human rights activist Kitty Jones told the commission that there’s a ton of support for the ban locally, noting more than 60 organizations have signed on to a letter calling for it.
PRESS
May 16, 2026
New York Post
PRESS
May 16, 2026
Turlock Journal
Dehorning is controversial because of the pain it inflicts on the animal and is only recommended after local anesthesia is applied as well as sedation by a veterinarian or a trained professional. Some dairies, however, do not follow those guidelines.
PRESS
May 16, 2026
Turlock Journal
PRESS
May 13, 2026
The Modesto Bee
“The reality is that even at the supposed best of the best dairy companies, newborn animals are ripped away from their mothers, confined, mutilated and forced into submission through violence,” Almira Tanner, Direct Action Everywhere’s lead organizer, said in a press release.
PRESS
May 13, 2026
The Modesto Bee
PRESS
May 12, 2026
New York Post
In the video, the animals try to buck and get away from the pain being inflicted on them while another worker holds their head down with their foot. At one point, we see one of the calves just collapse from the pain after the horrific experience.
PRESS
May 12, 2026
New York Post
PRESS RELEASE
May 12, 2026
New footage showing illegal animal cruelty at a Clover Sonoma-supplying calf ranch was published today at FactoryFarmWatch.org. The footage, which was obtained via drone at Agresti Calf Ranch in Stanislaus County, shows calves being kicked in the face, yanked by their tails, and disbudded with hot irons until they collapse in pain.
PRESS RELEASE
May 12, 2026
PRESS
May 2, 2026
KRON4 Bay Area
Around 20 protesters rallied outside Whole Foods in Berkeley, demanding they stop carrying goat milk from Meyenberg’s Vera Goat Dairy farm near Fresno. This comes ahead of a hearing accusing two activists of felony grand theft after they took two goats they claim were sick last May.
PRESS
May 2, 2026
KRON4 Bay Area
PRESS
May 1, 2026
Local News Matters
The court reversed the felony conspiracy charge and one misdemeanor trespass charge for Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, co-founder Wayne Hsiung, the organization said. The animal rights group said the court rejected the prosecutor’s argument that animals are to be categorically excluded from a “necessity defense.”
PRESS
May 1, 2026
Local News Matters
PRESS
April 30, 2026
The Press Democrat
“That the court has reversed the majority of Mr. Hsiung’s convictions just a matter of days after argument is a major rebuke to a trial that we have always insisted was riddled with legal and factual errors,” Justin Marceau, director of the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at the University of Denver Sturm College of Law, said in a press release.
PRESS
April 30, 2026
The Press Democrat
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...
TOP PRESS
June 13, 2023
The Intercept
In conjunction with the release of an undercover investigation on the factory farm, the group DxE mounted an “open rescue” of birds from a slaughterhouse.
TOP PRESS
March 30, 2023
Salt Lake Tribune
If government agencies were taking these [investigative] reports seriously and protecting animals from cruelty, there would be no need for bills like this. But certain Utah legislators have decided that the real problem with sick, suffering animals is the potential for negative publicity for the industry and so it is the industry, not the animals, that need protection.
TOP PRESS
March 21, 2023
Vox
DxE’s theory — that when you show a jury of ordinary citizens what happens to animals in the meat industry, they’ll agree that they deserve rescue — turned out to be true, challenging the idea that the animal rights agenda is radical or unpopular.
TOP PRESS
March 20, 2023
LA Times
“This is a victory for [the chickens] Ethan, Jax, and all other living beings subjected to abuse by corporations like Foster Farms,” Santurio said in a news release from Direct Action Everywhere. “I have so much love for the chickens in my family and I want all animals to experience that safety and respect.”
TOP PRESS
March 9, 2023
LA Times
“We published this video within an hour with both my name and Alicia Santurio’s name attached to it because we believe what we’re doing is legal and morally right,” Paul said in an interview with The Times.
BLOG
August 23, 2022
The #SmithfieldTrial is moving to Washington County, Utah because the judge agreed it would be a challenge to find an impartial jury in Beaver County.
BLOG
August 16, 2022
Despite this supposed safeguard, if a local entity wants to take the lives of Canada geese, an application and a verbal statement over the phone grants instant permit approval from the USDA –which killed 26,000 Canada geese last year alone.
BLOG
August 11, 2022
These stories - the story of Smithfield, the story of Lily and Lizzie, and the story of government and industry collusion - are too important to tell for us to just give in to intimidation and bullying.
BLOG
August 3, 2022
Let this story be a reminder that animals do fight for their freedom and that they participate in their own liberation.
BLOG
July 21, 2022
Activists gathered for a vigil exactly two years after the release of Unseen, a documentary that exposed the horrors inside Yosemite Foods, a slaughterhouse in Stockton, California, that kills 2,000 pigs every day.
BLOG
July 19, 2022
DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung recently shared the story of a very sick pig who was rescued from Farmer John. This is an excerpt from his Substack blog, The Simple Heart.
BLOG
July 5, 2022
Our signs read “Expose Smithfield’s Deathstar” referring to Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms in Milford, Utah, the largest pig farm in the country. While many criticized the tackiness and absurdity of the action, it garnered much needed media attention.
BLOG
July 2, 2022
Here's what this could mean.
BLOG
June 25, 2022
The protest occurred after yet another horse was killed at the horse racing track that spans Berkeley and Albany.
PRESS RELEASE
May 12, 2026
New footage showing illegal animal cruelty at a Clover Sonoma-supplying calf ranch was published today at FactoryFarmWatch.org. The footage, which was obtained via drone at Agresti Calf Ranch in Stanislaus County, shows calves being kicked in the face, yanked by their tails, and disbudded with hot irons until they collapse in pain.
PRESS RELEASE
April 11, 2026
Protesters at the Meyenberg plant held signs reading “Meyenberg Lies, Animals Die” and “Compassion Is Not a Crime.” Two of the defendants were present and spoke out about the cruelty they documented at Vera Goat Dairy.
PRESS RELEASE
March 25, 2026
Four activists have been charged with felony grand theft by the Kings County District Attorney following the open rescue of two sick baby goats from Vera Goat Dairy in Stratford last May. Vera is a 9,000-goat operation that supplies the nation's largest goat milk producer, Meyenberg.
PRESS RELEASE
March 11, 2026
Controversial chicken producer Petaluma Poultry has lost another customer following an investigation by animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), which exposed animal neglect and cruelty at the company’s factory farms and slaughterhouse in Sonoma County.
PRESS RELEASE
March 1, 2026
The ten-foot milk carton showed a photo of a calf with the word "Missing" to underscore how the dairy industry routinely separates babies from their mothers on the day they are born.
PRESS RELEASE
February 21, 2026
Drone footage published this week at FactoryFarmWatch.org shows calves being thrown to the ground, dragged and shot in the head at Grimmius Cattle Company
PRESS RELEASE
February 17, 2026
The first-of-its-kind map at FactoryFarmWatch.org is the most comprehensive single source of information on CA's 1300+ industrial animal farms
PRESS RELEASE
February 11, 2026
After completing both phases of her court-ordered detention for rescuing four birds from Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse, animal rights activist Zoe Rosenberg’s first course of action was to travel to a chicken slaughterhouse in Stockton.
PRESS RELEASE
February 6, 2026
Sonoma County Judge Jane Gaskell struck both causes of action brought by the national poultry giant Perdue Foods in a lawsuit against Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). Judge Gaskell also struck these causes of action for Perdue executive Scott Fitzpatrick. Perdue is now removed from the case and only two causes of action remain for Fitzpatrick.
