She Took Birds Facing Death in a Commercial Farm. Did It Constitute a Rescue or a Crime?
One Monday afternoon in late September, the University of California, Berkeley attendee emerged from a tribunal in California's Santa Rosa. Accompanied by her lawyers, she hurried 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.
This marked the final stages of choosing the jury for the case against Rosenberg. She stood accused of two lesser charges for illegal access and one count of vehicle interference, as well as a felony conspiracy indictment. If convicted on all charges, she could face up to 54 months in incarceration.
It’s not a whodunit … It’s a whydunit.
The facts at the center of the case were agreed upon. In the early hours on a June night in 2023, Rosenberg and several other members of the collective the activist network drove to Petaluma Poultry, a meat plant about a short drive north of the Bay Area. Posing as employees, they came across a vehicle filled with countless poultry confined in cages. They took four birds, secured them in pails and left the scene.
The events were uncontested because the group members had later published film clips of their actions. “It’s not a whodunit,” the legal counsel, Carraway, likes to say. “It's about the motivation.”
Once they departed the facility, the activists examined the chickens – that they dubbed four named hens - more thoroughly. Rosenberg says they were soiled with excrement and experiencing cuts and scrapes.
Her attorney clarified in the courtroom that Rosenberg’s intent was not to commit theft but to provide assistance. The jurors would be tasked with deciding, practically, the limits of compassion before it turns illegal.
As the child of an animal doctor, Rosenberg grew up on a sizable property in San Luis Obispo county, CA, living with cats, dogs, goats, guinea pigs and rabbits.
At age nine, the household acquired poultry at home. She remembers clearly their names without pausing: her feathered friends. Until then, Zoe believed the widespread belief that chickens were not too bright, but observing them closely altered her perspective. “I discovered they have unique personalities and that they are intelligent and inquisitive, and that they possess great worth.”
Two years later, She saw an digital recording of protesters accessing a big egg farm in the country and rescuing hens. She had never before seen inside a commercial farm, and she was appalled at the situation: numerous poultry crammed in small spaces. It served as her first encounter to the notion of publicized rescues, the description used by rescuers to explain actions in which they access commercial farms or research facilities and take creatures in need. They publicize their actions, frequently sharing videos of what they do.
Once she saw it, She quickly decided that she desired to participate, and she emailed the director of the organization responsible. (“She had no idea I was 11,” Rosenberg recalled.) A year later, in that year, she established the local branch of the organization, a emerging advocacy group.
Over the years, activist collectives have developed an image for using direct actions – like efforts from the group equating eating meat with historical atrocities or publicity grabs using fake blood. The reasoning is straightforward: shock value is required to shake societal indifference about animal suffering. But the result is often the opposite: driving individuals away. In a society where eating meat is the norm, people often perceive these demonstrations as a individual insult – and sense blame, not enlightenment.
DxE follows in this tradition; they have organized demonstrations near a meat market in Berkeley and caused a disturbance at the popular eatery the establishment.
Yet, their defining operation has been “open rescues”. According to the group, an advantage of this approach is that it goes beyond raising awareness to an injustice – it tries, modestly, to address it. It focuses on the business rather than blaming everyday people, and allows a look into the secret realm of livestock farming.
“The trials we face are kind of a vehicle to ask the jury to a group of peers of our peers, and to others through the media,” said Cassie King, DxE’s communications lead. “Should it be illegal, or is it justified, to help a being that is suffering in a industrial facility?”
Already, members highlight, there are statutes allowing intervention in the state and multiple jurisdictions providing legal safeguards if they break into a car to remove an endangered animal. The claim is that the same principle should cover every being in suffering.
Since 2014, as stated by the representative, participants have been involved in dozens of rescues. In the past few years, rescuers have removed small hogs from a industrial farm in Utah; two chickens from a transport vehicle outside a slaughterhouse in Merced county; and three dogs from a scientific site in WI. Following the rescue, the rescuers ensure treatment and relocate them to safe environments.
The proprietor manages his family's farm with his relative in Petaluma. His family has owned the farm for over a century, he told me. They produce eggs with just under 1 million chickens, located in various coops. The business, which is energized by solar power, also converts waste into compost.
In May 2018, the group conducted a major action on Weber's land. Numerous protesters appeared to demonstrate. A subset stormed on to the property and {broke into a chicken house|accessed a poultry building|entered a coop
