A Woman Removed Poultry That Were Going to Die in a Commercial Farm. Could It Be Considered a Rescue or a Criminal Act?
One September afternoon in September's final days, the University of California, Berkeley attendee emerged from a tribunal in California's Santa Rosa. Flanked by her attorneys, she hurried through the hallways of the courthouse, beyond dozens of prospective jurors.
Fixed on her black blazer was a tiny silver chicken, shining on her collar.
These were the concluding moments of picking jurors for Rosenberg’s trial. She confronted two lesser charges for trespassing and one count of vehicle interference, as well as a serious conspiracy allegation. If convicted on all charges, she could spend up to 54 months in prison.
The question isn't the perpetrator … The focus is on the reason.
The core details of the case were not in dispute. Shortly after midnight on June 13, 2023, the group participants of the group DxE traveled to Petaluma Poultry, a processing center about a short drive north of San Francisco. Posing as employees, they found a transport truck filled with thousands of live chickens crammed in containers. They took four birds, secured them in pails and departed.
The events were uncontested because Rosenberg and her fellow activists had shared recorded evidence of the incident. “This isn't about the perpetrator,” the legal counsel, Chris Carraway, often states. “It’s a whydunit.”
Once they departed the facility, the activists examined the poultry – that they dubbed four named hens - in greater detail. Zoe claims they were soiled with excrement and showing injuries and sores.
Her attorney clarified in the courtroom that Zoe's purpose was not to steal but to provide assistance. The jury members would be tasked with deciding, in effect, where empathy ends before it turns illegal.
The daughter of a veterinarian, Rosenberg grew up on 16 hectares in the county area, the state, living with various pets and farm animals.
During her childhood, the household acquired poultry at home. She remembers clearly their identities effortlessly: Eddie, Chirp, Olive, Herki, Red, Daisy and Popcorn. Previously, She held the widespread belief that birds lacked smarts, but observing them closely altered her perspective. “I discovered they have individual traits and that they’re so smart and curious, and that their lives are really, really valuable.”
Subsequently, She saw an digital recording of rescuers infiltrating a big egg farm in Australia and taking birds. This was her initial exposure gotten a glimpse a industrial agriculture facility, and she was shocked by the conditions: countless birds crammed in small spaces. This also introduced her to the idea of open rescue, the term activists use to describe operations in which they infiltrate factory farms or labs and rescue suffering beings. They publicize their actions, regularly releasing recordings of what they do.
Following the viewing, Zoe instantly realized that was something she wanted to do, and she reached out to the head of the group behind it. (“She had no idea I was 11,” Rosenberg recalled.) The next year, in 2015, she established the regional group of Direct Action Everywhere, a then new non-profit.
Throughout time, advocacy organizations have developed an image for using confrontational tactics – like Peta’s campaign equating eating meat with historical atrocities or stunts that involve splattering fur with fake blood. The reasoning is straightforward: shock value is required to awaken public awareness about livestock pain. But the result is often the opposite: alienating the public. Where meat consumption is standard, numerous view these actions as a direct criticism – and sense blame, not enlightenment.
The group continues this approach; they have held “die-ins” at a retail store in Berkeley and disrupted a Friday dinner at the renowned dining spot Chez Panisse.
But the group’s signature move has been publicized rescues. From the activists’ perspective, one virtue of the tactic is that it does not just call attention to an unfairness – it attempts, in a small way, to remedy the situation. It also targets the business rather than implicating individual consumers, and allows a look into the unseen environment of animal agriculture.
“Our legal battles are a method to pose the question to a group of peers of our peers, and to others through the media,” said the communications lead, the spokesperson. “Is it wrong, or is it moral, to save a creature who’s dying in a commercial operation?”
Already, members highlight, there are “right to rescue” laws in California and multiple jurisdictions providing legal safeguards if they break into a car to save an at-risk being. The claim is that the identical logic should apply to all animals in suffering.
Since 2014, according to King, participants have participated in about 60 such operations. In the past few years, the group has saved young pigs from a commercial operation; a pair of birds from a company truck near a processing plant in the county; and three dogs from a breeding and research facility in the state. Following the rescue, the activists provide them with veterinary care and relocate them to safe environments.
Mike Weber operates his family's farm with his relative in the area. The property has been inherited for 113 years, he explained. The farm focuses on poultry with a large flock, kept in multiple structures. The farm, which is energized by solar power, also converts waste into compost.
During May of 2018, DxE activists staged a significant event on his farm. Several hundred activists showed up to protest. A subset stormed on to the property and {broke into a chicken house|accessed a poultry building|entered a coop
