She Took Birds Destined for Slaughter in a Commercial Farm. Could It Be Considered a Rescue or a Illegal Deed?
One Monday afternoon in September's final days, Zoe Rosenberg emerged from a courtroom in California's Santa Rosa. Flanked by her lawyers, she moved briskly through the court building's passages, by over a hundred potential jurors.
Attached to her black blazer was a tiny silver chicken, shining on her collar.
This marked the final stages of jury selection for Rosenberg’s trial. She was facing two minor offenses for trespassing and one count of vehicle interference, as well as one count of felony conspiracy. If the verdict goes against her, she could receive up to over four years in jail.
It’s not a whodunit … It’s a whydunit.
The facts at the center of the case were uncontested. Just past midnight on a June night in 2023, Rosenberg and several other members of the collective DxE headed to Petaluma Poultry, a slaughterhouse about 40 miles north of the Bay Area. Dressed like staff, they encountered a truck filled with numerous birds confined in cages. They rescued four hens, put them in containers and departed.
The events were uncontested because Zoe and her companions had shared recorded evidence of their actions. “The identity isn't in question,” her attorney, the defense lawyer, often states. “It’s a whydunit.”
Once they departed the facility, the group inspected the poultry – that they dubbed four named hens - in greater detail. Rosenberg says they were covered in waste and showing injuries and sores.
The lawyer argued in legal proceedings that her aim was not to commit theft but to provide assistance. The panel would be asked to determine, in effect, how far compassion can go before it becomes a crime.
As the child of an animal doctor, Rosenberg grew up on a sizable property in the county area, CA, in the company of cats, dogs, goats, guinea pigs and rabbits.
During her childhood, the they obtained back-yard chickens. She recalls easily their identities without pausing: Eddie, Chirp, Olive, Herki, Red, Daisy and Popcorn. Previously, Zoe believed the general view that chickens were not too bright, but getting to know them altered her perspective. “I realized they have distinct characters and that they are intelligent and inquisitive, and that their existence matters deeply.”
Two years later, She saw an internet clip 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 shocked by the conditions: numerous poultry crammed in small spaces. This also introduced her to the idea of open rescue, the phrase employed by advocates to describe operations in which they access commercial farms or labs and rescue suffering beings. They disclose their activities, regularly releasing recordings of their actions.
Following the viewing, She quickly decided that she desired to participate, and she contacted the leader of the group behind it. (“She had no idea I was 11,” Zoe remembered.) Subsequently, in the mid-2010s, she established the local branch of the organization, a then new animal rights organization.
Over the years, activist collectives have developed an image for using confrontational tactics – such as Peta’s campaign equating eating meat with historical atrocities or stunts that involve splattering fur with fake blood. The reasoning is straightforward: it takes shock to shake societal indifference about creature distress. But the result is often the opposite: turning people off. In cultures centered on animal products, people often perceive these demonstrations as a individual insult – and experience condemnation, not conversion.
DxE follows in this tradition; they have held “die-ins” at a retail store in the city and interrupted a meal at the beloved restaurant the venue.
Yet, their defining operation has been publicized rescues. In the view of the rescuers, one virtue of the tactic is that it does not just call attention to an injustice – 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 livestock farming.
“The trials we face are a means to pose the question to a group of peers of our fellow citizens, and to society via coverage,” said a group representative, the spokesperson. “Is it a crime, or is it moral, to save a creature that is suffering in a commercial operation?”
Currently, DxE activists note, there are statutes allowing intervention in California and multiple jurisdictions offering immunity if they forcibly enter a motor vehicle to save an at-risk being. Their argument is that the comparable reasoning should extend to all creatures in distress.
Over the past decade, per the group, participants have participated in about 60 such operations. Recently, activists have taken small hogs from a commercial operation; two chickens from a transport vehicle near a processing plant in California's Merced; and canines 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.
The proprietor operates 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 a large flock, kept in multiple structures. The farm, which is powered by more than 2,500 solar panels, also turns the chickens’ manure into organic fertilizer.
Back in 2018, protesters carried out a major action on the property. A large group gathered to object. A subset stormed on to the property and {broke into a chicken house|accessed a poultry building|entered a coop
