During a September afternoon in September's final days, the University of California, Berkeley attendee emerged from a tribunal in the city of Santa Rosa. Flanked by her legal team, she walked quickly through the courthouse corridors, beyond dozens of prospective jurors.
Fixed on her dark jacket was a small metallic bird, sparkling on her jacket.
This marked the final stages of jury selection for the case against Rosenberg. She confronted two lesser charges for unauthorized entry 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 four and a half years in jail.
The question isn't the perpetrator … It’s a whydunit.
The core details of the case were uncontested. Just past midnight on June 13, 2023, Rosenberg and several other members of the collective Direct Action Everywhere headed to a poultry processing plant, a meat plant about a short drive north of the Bay Area. Disguised as workers, they found a transport truck filled with thousands of live chickens crammed in containers. They took four birds, secured them in pails and drove away.
The events were uncontested because the group members had later published recorded evidence of what they had done. “This isn't about the perpetrator,” the legal counsel, Carraway, likes to say. “The reason is key.”
After leaving the slaughterhouse, the activists examined the poultry – which they called four named hens - in greater detail. Zoe claims they were covered in waste and suffering from wounds and abrasions.
Carraway would explain in the courtroom that Rosenberg’s intent was not to commit theft but to aid them. The jurors would be asked to determine, in effect, how far compassion can go before it turns illegal.
The daughter of a veterinarian, She spent her childhood on 40 acres in the county area, CA, in the company of various pets and farm animals.
At age nine, the family got poultry at home. She can still rattle off their monikers effortlessly: Eddie, Chirp, Olive, Herki, Red, Daisy and Popcorn. Until then, Zoe believed the general view that poultry weren't intelligent, but observing them closely altered her perspective. “I discovered they have unique personalities and that their minds are sharp, and that they possess great worth.”
A couple of years after, Rosenberg watched an online video of protesters accessing a large poultry operation in overseas and taking birds. She had never before gotten a glimpse a industrial agriculture facility, and she was disturbed by the environment: countless birds crammed in small spaces. It was also her introduction to the idea of open rescue, the phrase employed by advocates to describe operations in which they infiltrate factory farms or research facilities and remove animals they deem to be in distress. They disclose their activities, frequently sharing videos of their actions.
Following the viewing, Rosenberg immediately knew that was something she wanted to do, and she reached out to the head of the activist collective. (“She had no idea I was 11,” she noted.) A year later, in 2015, she started the San Luis Obispo chapter of DxE, a emerging advocacy group.
Throughout time, advocacy organizations have become known for using aggressive methods – such as Peta’s campaign equating eating meat with historical atrocities or stunts that involve splattering fur with fake blood. The idea is clear: it takes shock to jolt people out of complacency about creature distress. Yet, it can lead to rejection: alienating the public. Where meat consumption is standard, people often perceive these demonstrations as a direct criticism – and sense blame, not enlightenment.
DxE follows in this tradition; they have organized demonstrations at a retail store in Berkeley and interrupted a meal at the beloved restaurant Chez Panisse.
But the group’s signature move has been documented interventions. From the activists’ perspective, one virtue of the tactic is that it does not just call attention to an unfairness – it seeks, to some extent, to address it. It also targets the agricultural sector rather than implicating individual consumers, and allows a look into the secret realm of animal agriculture.
“The trials we face are kind of a vehicle to ask the jury to a randomly selected jury of our peers, and to society via coverage,” said Cassie King, an activist. “Should it be illegal, or is it the right thing to do, to help a being that is suffering in a factory farm?”
At present, DxE activists note, there are “right to rescue” laws in CA and numerous states offering immunity if they break into a car to save an at-risk being. They contend that the same principle should apply to all animals in need.
Since 2014, per the group, activists have participated in about 60 such operations. In the past few years, activists have taken young pigs from a Utah factory farm; several hens from a transport vehicle at a facility in California's Merced; and three dogs from a scientific site in the state. After removing the animals, the group offers medical attention and find them shelters.
A farmer runs Weber Family Farms with his brother in the city. His family has owned the farm for 113 years, he stated. The farm focuses on poultry with nearly a million birds, kept in multiple structures. The farm, which is powered by more than 2,500 solar panels, also converts waste into compost.
During May of 2018, the group conducted a large-scale operation on Weber's land. Several hundred activists appeared to demonstrate. Some of them stormed on to the property and {broke into a chicken house|accessed a poultry building|entered a coop
