US student who took four chickens after breaking into slaughterhouse sentenced to 90 days in jail | California
A student in California was sentenced to 90 days in jail for breaking into a petaluma poultry slaughterhouse and taking four chickens in an effort he called a “rescue.”
Zoe Rosenberg, a 23-year-old student at the University of California at Berkeley, was convicted of felony conspiracy and three misdemeanor counts in October. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced him to 90 days in jail; 60 of which may include alternative sentences such as house arrest; this was much less than the maximum four-and-a-half-year prison sentence he could have faced. The judge also ordered Rosenberg to pay more than $100,000 to Petaluma Poultry, the Perdue Farms facility from which he bought four chickens in 2023. Rosenberg was ordered to report to the Sonoma County Jail on December 10.
“I will not apologize for taking sick, neglected animals to medical care,” Rosenberg told reporters after his conviction.
In 2023, Rosenberg and other members of the animal welfare group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) entered a Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse posing as workers in the agricultural region of Sonoma County, just north of San Francisco. Rosenberg and her fellow activists then took four chickens, which they named Poppy, Ivy, Aster and Azalea, out of the slaughterhouse and placed them in an animal shelter. He and other members of DxE posted footage of the action online. “This is not bullshit,” Rosenberg’s attorney, Chris Carraway, said throughout the hearing. “It’s a why puzzle.”
Rosenberg did not deny that he bought the chickens from the Perdue slaughterhouse, but said that he saved the birds from this cruel situation. DxE activists say “right to rescue” laws Regulations in California and 13 other states that provide legal protection to people who get into a motor vehicle to rescue an endangered animal must apply to all endangered animals. The group had coordinated 60 such operations from Utah to Wisconsin since 2014, a DxE spokesman told the Guardian in October.
Petaluma Poultry, which owns the facility Rosenberg entered, called DxE an extremist group seeking to destroy animal agriculture.
In a statement Berkeley sideSonoma County Farm Bureau agreed. “For years, DxE has harassed farm families and employees, trespassed on private property, and stolen from local businesses,” said Dayna Ghirardelli, the bureau’s executive director.
Supporters, including actor Joaquin Phoenix, shared their reactions to Rosenberg’s conviction on Wednesday. “When individuals step in to save a life because the system looks the other way, they should be supported, not prosecuted,” he said in a statement. “We must decide who we are as a society: those who protect the defenseless or those who punish those who try.”
