Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
TOP PRESS
March 5, 2026
Vox
DxE filmed Grimmius’s operations using drone cameras, documenting many of the grim realities ubiquitous in the mass production of animals for food: calves being handled roughly, hit, and pushed to the ground. But perhaps most remarkably, the footage offers a rare view of what is arguably the most overlooked form of extreme confinement of farmed animals in the US.
TOP PRESS
March 5, 2026
Vox
PRESS
December 1, 2023
CBS Bay Area
The organization is hoping to make legal the right of people to enter places such as a factory farm to remove animals that are being "exploited" or are in distress.
PRESS
December 1, 2023
CBS Bay Area
PRESS
December 1, 2023
Democracy Now!
In California, animal rights activist and attorney Wayne Hsiung has been sentenced to 90 days in jail after he was found guilty of felony conspiracy and misdemeanor trespassing for rescuing dozens of injured and dying ducks and chickens at two factory farms in Sonoma County, California.
PRESS
December 1, 2023
Democracy Now!
PRESS
December 1, 2023
UnchainedTV
Hsiung could have been sentenced to three years in jail. So, at first blush, the relatively light sentence caused relief amongst his supporters. However, it quickly became apparent that the sentence contained an onerous condition. Without the prosecution asking for this, the judge ordered Hsiung to have no contact with the other named “co-conspirators” in this case, who just happen to be most of his closest friends.
PRESS
December 1, 2023
UnchainedTV
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Northern California Public Media
Hsiung’s father, Hansen Hsiung, spoke about the sentence outside the courthouse. "I expect something worse than this," Hansen Hsiung said. "So I feel great relief, even though I know that Wayne doesn't deserve any jail sentence, doesn't deserve to be convicted as a criminal."
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Northern California Public Media
PRESS RELEASE
November 30, 2023
The University of Denver’s Animal Activist Legal Defense Project is working on the appeal. Attorney Chris Carraway said, “I often hear courts describe trials as a search for the truth. Mr. Hsiung’s trial was anything but. The press had limited access; trial participants were unconstitutionally gagged from the beginning; and the court bent over backwards to prevent the defense from detailing the chronic animal cruelty found which informed the intent behind the actions."
PRESS RELEASE
November 30, 2023
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Press Democrat
Shortly after court recessed, animal welfare activist Zoe Rosenberg, who said she was going to drop printed evidence of animal cruelty at Reichardt Duck Farm at the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office, asked others to march with her to the department a few blocks away. As they approached the parking lot, Sheriff’s Office vehicles approached and deputies arrested Rosenberg and two other demonstrators, Rocky Chau and Conrad de Jesus.
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Press Democrat
PRESS
November 30, 2023
North Bay Business Journal
A dozen of Wayne Hsiung’s supporters watched silently — some of whom fought back tears — as Sonoma County Superior Court Judge Laura Passaglia sentenced Hsiung to 90 days in county jail, followed by two years of probation.
PRESS
November 30, 2023
North Bay Business Journal
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Marin Independent Journal
Hearing and seeing animal agriculture firsthand, I know that animals deserve better. I will never forget seeing a cow running after a transport truck leaving a dairy. They were running parallel to the road just to be stopped by a fence, and forced to watch their family being taken away. This single event one day at one farm was so profound I can’t imagine how much suffering happens daily at factory farms everywhere.
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Marin Independent Journal
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Plant-Based News
From his jail cell, where he was held for four weeks awaiting sentencing, Hsiung published blog posts reaffirming his belief in the power of non-violent direct action. He also reported successes in educating fellow inmates on veganism and animal rights.
PRESS
November 30, 2023
Plant-Based News
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
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.
BLOG
December 17, 2025
I write to you from this jail cell on behalf of the animals, to beg for your assistance and intervention. This cruelty and suffering has gone on far too long.
BLOG
December 16, 2025
To some, my being here may look like losing. I don’t see it that way. I see it as a sign that we have come to be a real threat to companies like Perdue that make billions of dollars off the mistreatment of animals.
BLOG
December 15, 2025
Since my incarceration, lives have continued to be saved. On my first day in jail, two chickens were rescued from a slaughterhouse in Stockton, California. They've been named Josephine and Jasmine.
BLOG
December 11, 2025
My cell is small, but I can stand up and take a few steps. In many parts of the US, animals can legally be housed in such tight confinement that they can't even spread their limbs or turn around.
BLOG
December 10, 2025
My prosecutors are hoping my jail sentence will scare you. They’re hoping you’ll consider rescuing an animal and then think of me and change your mind. No. Think of me if you will, but then do it.
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.
PRESS RELEASE
January 23, 2026
UC Berkeley students, alumni, and local residents held a “Free Zoe” rally and march on the UC Berkeley campus on Friday, demanding the pardon of animal rights activist Zoe Rosenberg, who is currently on house arrest.
PRESS RELEASE
January 12, 2026
He also denied Trader Joe’s request to restrict protesters’ use of amplified sound on public property outside their stores, writing, “prohibition on the use of sound amplification devices is an invalid infringement upon Defendants’ free speech rights.”
PRESS RELEASE
January 12, 2026
Zoe Rosenberg will check in at the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office tomorrow and get an ankle monitor put on before beginning her home detention
