Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
PRESS
June 3, 2025
Wired Magazine
Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America’s agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an informant for the FBI.
PRESS
June 3, 2025
Wired Magazine
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
BLOG
December 26, 2023
The Sonoma County Court's actions didn't stop me but, instead, spurred me to further action just as it did for many others.
PRESS
December 22, 2023
Press Democrat
Rosenberg's attorney, Kevin Little, argued Friday she poses no public safety risk and the ankle monitor is unnecessary. "Clearly, Miss Rosenberg is not a flight risk."
PRESS
December 22, 2023
Press Democrat
PRESS
December 20, 2023
TruthDig
For the 1,000-plus lives I’ve saved, I’ve mostly received praise from the general public and from public officials. As a result of my rescue work, I was invited to deliver a TED talk when I was 15. But in Sonoma County, I’m being called a terrorist for saving criminally abused chickens and ducks from suffering and painful death. What are we supposed to do, as concerned members of the public, when law enforcement fails to help animals in need of aid?
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.
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.
BLOG
June 15, 2021
The Tennessee legislature has passed a bill that would include farms in the definition of critical infrastructure. But at what cost?
BLOG
May 26, 2021
Research indicates that likely the best tactic to reduce the impact of imposter syndrome is talking about it.
BLOG
April 20, 2021
New investigation into Land O'Lakes shows routine violations of own animal welfare standards
BLOG
April 1, 2021
BLOG
January 25, 2021
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 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.
PRESS RELEASE
March 20, 2025
“I’m appalled that Trader Joe’s would continue to knowingly sell abused animals,” said Sally Zito of Los Angeles, who joined today’s protest in Monrovia. “I have delivered letters and I’ve called corporate headquarters and asked to talk to Trader Joe’s buyers, and they denied this request. They are putting their profits over the lives of animals.”
