Zoe Rosenberg is a 22-year-old UC Berkeley student, a factory farm investigator and animal rescuer for Direct Action Everywhere, a grassroots organization of animal activists in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently facing one felony charge of conspiracy, two misdemeanors for trespassing, one misdemeanor for theft, and one misdemeanor for tampering with a vehicle in Sonoma County.
The charges are a result of her arrest on Nov. 30, 2024, for allegedly breaking into Perdue’s Petaluma poultry slaughterhouse and rescuing four abused chickens earlier that month.
Following Rosenberg’s March 3 hearing regarding her remaining charges, activists from Direct Action Everywhere gathered on the sidewalk outside the home of Jason Arnold, Perdue Farms’ director of operations, to protest his role in the factory farm industry.
Eight people gathered on the sidewalk on the chilly morning, holding banners and signs while chanting “Jason Arnold cut your ties with Perdue.” One protester wore a chicken costume.
The protest occurred half an hour after Rosenberg’s hearing, where the protesters showed support and protested her charges for rescuing the four chickens from Perdue’s Petaluma poultry slaughterhouse.
“It shows the court the public stands with the animals,” Rosenberg said.
During the hearing, Rosenberg’s attorney Chris Carraway, a staff attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, arranged for another hearing on April 8, in which the defense will submit a motion for affirmative defense of necessity. Judge Kenneth Gnoss set the hearing.
The defense of necessity is a legal defense used in an emergency situation in which a criminal act is committed to avoid further harm. Rosenberg is arguing in her case that the treatment and harm faced by the chickens in the farms made it necessary to break in and rescue the animals.
During a debrief with activists, Carraway seemed confident about the case moving forward.
“We’re ready to go to fight this,” Carraway said.
Direct Action Everywhere wrote in a press release before the hearing, “the District Attorney should prosecute animal cruelty and documented public health risks at Petaluma Poultry, rather than targeting a whistleblower who has helped expose these issues.”
“A report from The Press Democrat found that the Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse has much higher-than-average rates of salmonella and campylobacter, two pathogens that cause illness in humans,” the press release continued.
The entry of activists into the poultry farms was cited as a possible factor in public health risks. The California Department of Food and Agriculture released a report that linked “security breaches” into farms as potential biosecurity concerns that could lead to an outbreak of avian flu in these facilities, although the results of this finding were inconclusive.
“The accusations of biosecurity violations by investigators are completely unfounded. We take biosecurity precautions that are veterinarian-approved and go above and beyond industry standards,” Rosenberg said in a previous interview.
This hearing follows Measure J, a Nov. 2024 ballot measure which sought to downsize or shut down factory farms in Sonoma County. The measure was defeated in the 2024 elections.
Correction: An earlier version of this story cited protestors as standing on the lawn rather than the sidewalk of Jason Arnold’s home. Additionally, the earlier version reported the entry of activists as the focus of a California Department of Food and Agriculture report about public health risks. Security breaches are only one factor of the extensive report on avian influenza, and results were inconclusive.
