A San Francisco Bay Area woman has been found guilty of trespassing and conspiracy after she took four chickens from a processing plant in northern California, a spokesperson for a group representing her said.
Zoe Rosenberg, 23, did not deny taking the animals but said she was rescuing them from a cruel situation. She faces more than five years in prison. Rosenberg and her attorneys had said they would appeal if she was found guilty, said Lauren Gazzola, spokesperson for Animal Activist Legal Defense Project.
“Sonoma county spent over six weeks and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to protect a multibillion-dollar corporation from the rescue of four chickens worth less than $25,” Chris Carraway, Rosenberg’s attorney, said in a statement.
Rosenberg, an activist with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), removed the chickens from Petaluma Poultry in 2023. The company supplies chickens to Perdue Farms, one of the country’s largest poultry providers for major grocery chains.
At about midnight on 13 June 2023, Rosenberg and several other members of DxE drove to Petaluma Poultry, a slaughterhouse about 40 miles (65km) north of San Francisco. Disguised as workers, they encountered a truck filled with thousands of live chickens packed into crates. They removed four chickens, placed them in buckets and drove away. Rosenberg and her peers later released footage from that night.
Her attorneys argued the case wasn’t about whether she took the chickens – her organization filmed and released footage – but why she did it. Prosecutors, meanwhile, said she engaged in illegal behavior regardless of her motivation.
She was on trial for two misdemeanor counts of trespassing, a misdemeanor count of tampering with a vehicle and a felony conspiracy charge.
The trial unfolded in Sonoma county, where agriculture is a major industry. The co-founder of DxE was convicted two years ago for his role in factory farm protests in Petaluma, and was given 90 days in jail and two years of probation.
