Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email [email protected].
PRESS
June 3, 2025
Wired Magazine
Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED reveal top lobbyists and representatives of America’s agricultural industry led a persistent and often covert campaign to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations for nearly a decade, while relying on corporate spies to infiltrate meetings and functionally serve as an informant for the FBI.
PRESS
June 3, 2025
Wired Magazine
PRESS
December 3, 2024
Berkeleyside
When more people pay attention and take action to stop the devastating impact of CAFOs on animals, the environment and humans, we can correct our misguided path and put ourselves on the right side of history.
PRESS
December 3, 2024
Berkeleyside
November 12, 2024
Plant Based News
Currently, there are no CAFOs in Berkeley. The last remaining farm, a horse racing facility named Golden Gate Fields, closed in June of this year following prolonged protests over animal deaths. The new ban will ensure that no CAFOs can be built in the city.
PRESS RELEASE
November 12, 2024
A coalition of groups, including the Berkeley-based animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) and Compassionate Bay, led the effort to gather the signatures to get this CAFO ban on the ballot.
PRESS RELEASE
November 1, 2024
Zoe Rosenberg, 22, faces criminal charges for rescuing chickens from Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse in Petaluma, CA
PRESS RELEASE
October 29, 2024
Superior Farms is the largest industrial lamb slaughterhouse in the country, and is the subject of Ordinance 309 in Denver, an initiative on the November ballot introduced by Pro-Animal Future that would ban slaughterhouses within city limits
PRESS RELEASE
October 29, 2024
PRESS
October 29, 2024
Sentient
“Sonoma County is an agricultural county with factory farms that have been exposed for abusing animals, violating animal cruelty laws, and polluting waterways with toxic waste — and the authorities have failed to address it,” Cassie King, Communications Lead at Direct Action Everywhere, tells Sentient. Direct Action Everywhere is an animal rights organization, and one of the lead sponsors of Measure J.
PRESS
October 29, 2024
Sentient
PRESS
October 23, 2024
Civil Eats
In early October, Direct Action Everywhere, a network of animal rights activists, released undercover footage captured inside Superior this summer. Video footage shows what activists call potential legal and ethical violations: one lamb that appears to be conscious after slaughter; another with a prolapsed uterus, untreated and headed to slaughter; and workers laughing, spanking animals, and simulating sex acts with machinery on the slaughter line.
TOP PRESS
October 10, 2024
Vox
In principle, there’s a lot of sense in capping the size of factory farms. Measure J’s proponents are betting that progressive Sonoma County, better known for its tasting rooms than its slaughterhouses, can push California — and the nation — in that direction.
TOP PRESS
October 10, 2024
Vox
PRESS
October 8, 2024
The Isthmus
One of the thousands of beagles housed in tiny cages, the inspector found, “was limping while moving through the enclosure, not bearing any weight on the right front leg.” The dog had visible puncture wounds and swelling on its leg, near the carpal joint. There was no documentation of the injury on the cage’s enclosure card, and the facility admitted that no treatment had been provided, saying the injury “probably” would have been discovered later that day.
TOP PRESS
November 4, 2023
The Intercept
Hsiung’s defense was in many ways stymied from the jump. The judge barred almost all photo and video evidence of animal cruelty from the trial, as has been the case in a number of previous DxE trials. As I’ve previously noted, the decision to disallow such evidence is usually made to benefit a defendant — not showing gruesome images of a murder victim, for example. Such logic has been flipped in DxE cases, including Hsiung’s most recent, to the benefit of powerful agribusiness.
TOP PRESS
August 7, 2023
National Geographic
These crusaders are part of the so-called “open rescue” movement, in which animal rights activists brazenly take animals from factory farm operations. Direct Action Everywhere—better known as DxE—is at the forefront of this movement in the United States...
TOP PRESS
June 13, 2023
The Intercept
In conjunction with the release of an undercover investigation on the factory farm, the group DxE mounted an “open rescue” of birds from a slaughterhouse.
TOP PRESS
March 30, 2023
Salt Lake Tribune
If government agencies were taking these [investigative] reports seriously and protecting animals from cruelty, there would be no need for bills like this. But certain Utah legislators have decided that the real problem with sick, suffering animals is the potential for negative publicity for the industry and so it is the industry, not the animals, that need protection.
TOP PRESS
March 21, 2023
Vox
DxE’s theory — that when you show a jury of ordinary citizens what happens to animals in the meat industry, they’ll agree that they deserve rescue — turned out to be true, challenging the idea that the animal rights agenda is radical or unpopular.
TOP PRESS
March 20, 2023
LA Times
“This is a victory for [the chickens] Ethan, Jax, and all other living beings subjected to abuse by corporations like Foster Farms,” Santurio said in a news release from Direct Action Everywhere. “I have so much love for the chickens in my family and I want all animals to experience that safety and respect.”
TOP PRESS
March 9, 2023
LA Times
“We published this video within an hour with both my name and Alicia Santurio’s name attached to it because we believe what we’re doing is legal and morally right,” Paul said in an interview with The Times.
TOP PRESS
February 14, 2023
New York Times
In any context other than factory farming, treating animals the way we see chickens treated in the Foster Farms slaughterhouse videos would be considered blatant cruelty. Many would also consider it cruel to stand by while someone else handled animals this way. “If there’s someone in my neighborhood watching me boil birds alive, we’d say this is monstrous behavior,” Wayne Hsiung, a founder of DxE, told me.
TOP PRESS
February 9, 2023
San Francisco Chronicle
The message the pigs conveyed in the gas chamber footage is clear: They are in extreme pain, and they want to live. You don’t need the Agriculture Department to tell you that. You can see and hear it for yourself.
BLOG
October 1, 2023
To everyone who doesn’t believe in a better world, I understand. I feel your pain and I know how hard it is to keep going in a world as painful as ours. But, just a glimmer of hope saved Vincent’s life and it might just save the rest of the animals, too. So please, don’t give up.
BLOG
August 30, 2023
If you saw a little duckling on his back, paddling his legs and struggling to get back up, what would you do? Would you keep walking? Or would you help him?
BLOG
July 1, 2023
Since 2018, DxE investigators have documented routine violations of California's animal cruelty laws at Petaluma Poultry factory farms, but the authorities refuse to intervene -- so they are taking action themselves to rescue the animals.
BLOG
June 5, 2023
Your story on the shutdown of the Kentucky Derby racetrack failed to provide important context: the growing worldwide movement to abolish horseracing.
BLOG
May 23, 2023
During my time in Utah, I found people willing to have open and honest discussions. Why, then, are high-ranking members of the Church and the police attempting to stop that from happening? Could it be that egregious abuses documented by DxE at Smithfield were getting too close to those in power? When open dialogue threatens a power structure, it’s time to scrutinize that power structure.
BLOG
May 1, 2023
I have seen firsthand the trauma these programs inflict on children and the violence they inflict on animals. It’s time we reform 4-H and FFA to no longer include programs where kids raise animals to die.
BLOG
March 23, 2023
We have the momentum and we cannot stop now. 2023 will bring more open rescues, more bold actions, and more trials. As we tear down the industry, we lift up animals. We show the world the violence that must be left in the past, and the beauty the future can hold.
BLOG
February 1, 2023
Utah legislators with ties to the Farm Bureau released House Bill 114, “Theft Defense Amendments,” in direct response to the outcome of the Smithfield Trial.
BLOG
January 28, 2023
In the first-ever Bay Area Direct Action Skill Share (B.A.D.A.S.S.), starting March 25, a cross-movement cohort of 100 activists will unite in Oakland for 5 days of intensive direct action training.
PRESS RELEASE
June 4, 2025
Describing the requested gag order as “overbroad and vague by any constitutional standard,” Judge Gnoss noted that Ms. Rosenberg’s critics, too, had participated in public discussion about her case, pointing by way of example to a statement by Bill Mattos, President of the California Poultry Federation, describing Ms. Rosenberg’s rescue of four chickens as a “terrorist act.”
PRESS RELEASE
May 27, 2025
Tuesday's rescue follows a months-long investigation into Vera Goat Dairy by DxE earlier this year, which found that dozens of dead mother and baby goats are regularly dumped into an illegal dead pile on the property, indicating that the operation is experiencing high rates of mortality.
PRESS RELEASE
May 24, 2025
Approximately 200 activists with the animal rights network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) marched through downtown Petaluma Saturday afternoon in support of animal liberation and the right to rescue animals from abuse. They began at Penry Park and weaved through downtown including past diners at restaurants along the riverfront. Along the way, they chanted, delivered speeches, and handed out educational information to the public about Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse.
PRESS RELEASE
May 19, 2025
Over the weekend, animal rights activists with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) held protests across Sonoma County to elevate animal cruelty at Petaluma Poultry, a subsidiary of national poultry giant Perdue Foods. On Sunday, they delivered their message to Sonoma County District Attorney Carla Rodriguez with a protest outside her home in Windsor, urging her to finally prosecute Petaluma Poultry for documented criminal animal cruelty.
PRESS RELEASE
May 13, 2025
Free speech experts say that Perdue’s lawsuit is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation, or SLAPP suit, intended to silence activists, burden them with legal fees, and intimidate them from protesting. California's anti-SLAPP statute was passed to enable defendants to quickly dismiss meritless lawsuits targeting protected activities.
PRESS RELEASE
May 4, 2025
Direct Action Everywhere activists protest dozens of Trader Joe’s stores across the country asking the retailer to cut ties with Perdue’s California subsidiary, Petaluma Poultry, given documented animal abuse
PRESS RELEASE
March 29, 2025
“I want to know why Trader Joe’s is continuing to support Perdue’s animal cruelty and endangering consumers,” said Conrad de Jesus, an Oakland resident who participated in the protest. “They’ve seen the evidence of sick and injured animals languishing without medical care at Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry. It’s time they cut ties with this awful company.”
PRESS RELEASE
March 22, 2025
A handful of counter-protesters showed up with a Trump flag and a cardboard sign reading “Eat chicken.” They heckled the speakers and disrupted photos by standing in front of the photographers.
PRESS RELEASE
March 20, 2025
“I’m appalled that Trader Joe’s would continue to knowingly sell abused animals,” said Sally Zito of Los Angeles, who joined today’s protest in Monrovia. “I have delivered letters and I’ve called corporate headquarters and asked to talk to Trader Joe’s buyers, and they denied this request. They are putting their profits over the lives of animals.”
