California Animal Rights Activist Convicted in Chicken Theft

U.S.|She Said She Was Rescuing Chickens. A Jury Convicted Her of Trespassing.

A Bay Area activist was found guilty on Wednesday of breaking into a meat processing plant and stealing four chickens she said had been mistreated, in a trial that was being closely watched by animal rights groups and the agricultural industry.

A jury in Sonoma County, north of San Francisco, convicted Zoe Rosenberg, 23, of felony conspiracy, trespassing and other charges for a nighttime raid she conducted at Petaluma Poultry in 2023. Ms. Rosenberg, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, faces up to four and a half years in jail.

But the verdict’s implications are likely to ripple far beyond Sonoma County, a rich agricultural region known not just for its cattle and poultry but also its wine industry.

Ms. Rosenberg is a prominent member of Direct Action Everywhere, an animal liberation group based in Berkeley, Calif., that is known for its extreme tactics. The group, which goes by DxE, argues that animals should have the same rights as humans. Some members break into farms and film what they say are abused hens, cows and other livestock.

In recent years, juries have acquitted some DxE activists, even after they admitted to taking animals that did not belong to them.

In 2023, jurors in California’s Central Valley acquitted DxE activists of charges that they had taken two chickens from a Foster Farms slaughterhouse. Prosecutors called it stealing, but the activists, including Alexandra Paul, a former star on the television show “Baywatch,” said they were rescuing neglected animals, the way a person might break a window to rescue a dog trapped in a hot car.