During a weekday afternoon in late September, the University of California, Berkeley attendee exited a courtroom in Santa Rosa, California. Surrounded by her legal team, she walked quickly through the court building's passages, by over a hundred potential jurors.
Pinned to her formal coat was a tiny silver chicken, sparkling on her jacket.
It was one of the last days of jury selection for Rosenberg’s trial. She stood accused of two misdemeanor charges for trespassing and a charge related to meddling with a truck, as well as a serious conspiracy allegation. If the verdict goes against her, she could face up to 54 months in jail.
It’s not a whodunit … The focus is on the reason.
The facts at the center of the trial were uncontested. Just past midnight on June 13, 2023, Rosenberg and several other members of the collective Direct Action Everywhere headed to Petaluma Poultry, a meat plant about 64 kilometers north of the city. Dressed like staff, they found a transport truck filled with numerous birds packed into crates. They removed four chickens, placed them in buckets and drove away.
These facts were not in dispute because Zoe and her companions had subsequently released video footage of their actions. “It’s not a whodunit,” the legal counsel, Carraway, often states. “The reason is key.”
Once they departed the facility, the activists examined the chickens – which they called Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea - more thoroughly. Zoe claims they were covered in waste and experiencing cuts and scrapes.
Carraway would explain in court that Rosenberg’s intent was not to steal but to provide assistance. The jurors would be tasked with deciding, essentially, where empathy ends before it crosses into criminality.
Raised by a vet, Rosenberg grew up on 16 hectares in San Luis Obispo county, California, in the company of various pets and farm animals.
When she was nine, the household acquired back-yard chickens. She remembers clearly their monikers effortlessly: Eddie, Chirp, Olive, Herki, Red, Daisy and Popcorn. Before that time, She held the general view that birds lacked smarts, but observing them closely altered her perspective. “I realized they have individual traits and that they are intelligent and inquisitive, and that their lives are really, really valuable.”
A couple of years after, She saw an digital recording of activists entering a major egg producer in overseas and rescuing hens. She had never before seen inside a industrial agriculture facility, and she was disturbed by the environment: numerous poultry crammed in small spaces. It served as her first encounter to the concept of “open rescue”, the term activists use to detail missions in which they enter agricultural facilities or labs and rescue suffering beings. They make no secret of their work, regularly releasing recordings of their operations.
Following the viewing, Rosenberg immediately knew that this was her calling, and she emailed the director of the activist collective. (“My youth was unknown,” she noted.) The next year, in 2015, she started the San Luis Obispo chapter of Direct Action Everywhere, a recently formed advocacy group.
Throughout time, advocacy organizations have gained a reputation for using aggressive methods – including Peta’s campaign comparing meat consumption to the Holocaust or stunts that involve splattering fur with fake blood. The reasoning is straightforward: shock value is required to shake societal indifference about creature distress. But the result is often the opposite: driving individuals away. In cultures centered on animal products, numerous view these actions as a personal attack – and sense blame, not enlightenment.
They adhere to these methods; they have held “die-ins” near a meat market in the city and disrupted a Friday dinner at the renowned dining spot the venue.
Yet, their defining operation has been documented interventions. In the view of the rescuers, one virtue of the tactic is that it goes beyond raising awareness to an unfairness – it attempts, in a small way, to address it. It aims at the business rather than implicating individual consumers, and offers a glimpse into the unseen environment of meat production.
“Our legal battles are a method to present the issue to a diverse panel of our peers, and to the public via news outlets,” said the communications lead, the spokesperson. “Is it a crime, or is it moral, to help a being that is suffering in a industrial facility?”
Currently, DxE activists note, there are “right to rescue” laws in CA and multiple jurisdictions granting people criminal and civil protection if they access a vehicle to rescue a threatened creature. The claim is that the identical logic should apply to all animals in distress.
From 2014 onward, as stated by the representative, members of the group have been involved in dozens of rescues. Recently, the group has saved young pigs from a Utah factory farm; several hens from a transport vehicle near a processing plant in Merced county; and canines from a scientific site in WI. Once the creatures are taken, the rescuers ensure treatment and find them shelters.
A farmer manages his family's farm with his sibling in Petaluma. His family has owned the farm for many decades, he explained. The farm focuses on poultry with nearly a million birds, housed in about two dozen buildings. The farm, which is powered by more than 2,500 solar panels, also recycles droppings for soil.
In May 2018, protesters carried out a major action on the property. Numerous protesters gathered to object. A fraction of these invaded the farm and {broke into a chicken house|accessed a poultry building|entered a coop
