She Took Birds That Were Going to Die in a Factory Farm. Could It Be Considered a Rescue or a Crime?
On a weekday afternoon in late September, the University of California, Berkeley attendee emerged from a tribunal in California's Santa Rosa. Accompanied by her legal team, she moved briskly through the hallways of the courthouse, by over a hundred potential jurors.
Fixed on her black blazer was a small metallic bird, shining on her collar.
This marked the final stages of picking jurors for her legal proceedings. She confronted two lesser charges for unauthorized entry and one count of vehicle interference, as well as a felony conspiracy indictment. If convicted on all charges, she could face up to four and a half years in prison.
This isn't about who did it … The focus is on the reason.
The facts at the center of the trial were agreed upon. In the early hours on 13 June 2023, Zoe and fellow activists of the collective Direct Action Everywhere drove to Petaluma Poultry, a meat plant about 40 miles north of the city. Disguised as workers, they came across a vehicle filled with countless poultry crammed in containers. They took four birds, secured them in pails and left the scene.
The events were uncontested because Rosenberg and her fellow activists had later published video footage of what they had done. “It’s not a whodunit,” Rosenberg’s lawyer, Carraway, likes to say. “It’s a whydunit.”
After leaving the slaughterhouse, the rescuers checked the birds – whom they named Poppy, Ivy, Aster, and Azalea - in greater detail. Zoe claims they were covered in waste and experiencing cuts and scrapes.
The lawyer argued in legal proceedings that Zoe's purpose was not to take unlawfully but to aid them. The jury members would be tasked with deciding, in effect, where empathy ends before it becomes a crime.
Raised by a vet, She spent her childhood on 40 acres in San Luis Obispo county, California, surrounded by various pets and farm animals.
When she was nine, the family got hens for the yard. She can still rattle off their monikers without pausing: her feathered friends. Until then, She held the general view that poultry weren't intelligent, but getting to know them changed her views. “It became clear they have distinct characters and that their minds are sharp, and that their existence matters deeply.”
Two years later, She saw an internet clip of protesters accessing a large poultry operation in overseas and rescuing hens. This was her initial exposure gotten a glimpse a industrial agriculture facility, and she was appalled at the situation: numerous poultry crammed in small spaces. This also introduced her to the idea of open rescue, the description used by rescuers to explain actions in which they enter agricultural facilities or labs and take creatures in need. They disclose their activities, often posting footage of their actions.
Once she saw it, Zoe instantly realized that this was her calling, and she emailed the director of the organization responsible. (“They didn't know my age,” Rosenberg recalled.) A year later, in that year, she started the San Luis Obispo chapter of Direct Action Everywhere, a then new animal rights organization.
Over the years, advocacy organizations have gained a reputation for using aggressive methods – such as efforts from the group equating eating meat with historical atrocities or publicity grabs using fake blood. The logic is simple: it takes shock to shake societal indifference about animal suffering. Yet, it can lead to rejection: driving individuals away. Where meat consumption is standard, people often perceive these demonstrations as a personal attack – and experience condemnation, not conversion.
DxE follows in this tradition; they have staged protests at a retail store in Berkeley and disrupted a Friday dinner at the popular eatery Chez Panisse.
Yet, their defining operation has been “open rescues”. From the activists’ perspective, an advantage of this approach is that it not only highlights to an unfairness – it seeks, to some extent, to address it. It focuses on the business rather than blaming everyday people, and allows a look into the secret realm of meat production.
“The trials we face are kind of a vehicle to present the issue to a diverse panel of our peers, and to others through the media,” said Cassie King, the spokesperson. “Is it wrong, or is it justified, to rescue an animal in distress in a commercial operation?”
Already, members highlight, there are statutes allowing intervention in the state and multiple jurisdictions offering immunity if they forcibly enter a motor vehicle to remove an endangered animal. Their argument is that the identical logic should apply to all animals in distress.
Since 2014, according to King, activists 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 transport vehicle at a facility in California's Merced; and three dogs from a breeding and research facility in Wisconsin. After removing the animals, the activists provide them with veterinary care and find them shelters.
Mike Weber manages the agricultural business with his sibling in the area. The property has been inherited for over a century, he stated. It is an egg-laying operation with a large flock, housed in about two dozen buildings. The business, which is powered by more than 2,500 solar panels, also recycles droppings for soil.
In May 2018, DxE activists staged a significant event on Weber's land. Numerous protesters gathered to object. Some of them invaded the farm and {broke into a chicken house|accessed a poultry building|entered a coop
