Breaking news and publications from Direct Action Everywhere.
Media inquiry? Please email press@dxe.io.
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
Videos shared with The Intercept prior to the report’s public release show, among other scenes, lambs with their throats slit hanging upside down and thrashing on the slaughter line; one animal with an internal organ that has been torn inside-out and left dangling behind it as it heads to slaughter; injured lambs being led to slaughter; workers laughing, spanking animals, and engaging in simulated sex acts with nearby machinery as lambs are having their throats slit; and the apparent use of so-called Judas sheep — adult sheep kept alive at the facility and used to lead the young sheep to slaughter.
TOP PRESS
October 9, 2024
The Intercept
PRESS
March 8, 2024
Isthmus
[Defendant Wayne Hsiung] expressed his frustration that “the public still does not know what is happening in research facilities like Ridglan,” which the trial may have shed light on. He said the dismissal left unaddressed some “incredibly important legal and moral issues,” including whether “people have the freedom of conscience to help animals when they’re suffering.”
PRESS RELEASE
March 8, 2024
Today, in a stunning development, the State of Wisconsin moved to dismiss charges against three animal rights activists accused of rescuing three beagles from Ridglan Farms, one of the last two remaining large breeders of dogs for vivisection in the country. Judge Mario White granted the dismissal at a hearing this morning.
PRESS
March 7, 2024
Isthmus
According to the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, “DxE documented dogs crammed into small cages, often alone, with no access to the outdoors; apparent continuous 24-hour lighting; noxious air and feces building up beneath the cages; dogs with red and swollen feet from standing on wire cage floors; and extreme psychological torment. The activists describe the conditions as a ‘factory farm for dogs.’ ”
PRESS
March 6, 2024
Pathways
Focusing only on the environment is a mistake. We need a different relationship with animals. As "Earthlings" so powerfully states, "We must learn empathy. We must learn to see into the eyes of an animal and feel that their life has value because they are alive."
PRESS RELEASE
February 27, 2024
The demonstration highlighted the horrifying conditions in which Ridglan Farms confines thousands of beagles for experimentation... The action featured speeches from Stanford alumni and a former Stanford researcher.
PRESS RELEASE
February 27, 2024
PRESS
February 14, 2024
Sentient Media
At Ridglan, [rescuer Eva] Hamer recalls, beagles were found confined not unlike chickens in the egg industry. “The size to body ratio is similar to a chicken farm,” she says, describing the size of the cages... Another similarity to factory farms, she adds, “is the smell, you can smell them from a mile away.” Yet, there was one thing quite different, even “bizarre,” Hamer adds: “Factory farms tend to be quiet at night. At the dog farm, everyone is howling, thousands of dogs, howling.”
PRESS
February 14, 2024
Sentient Media
PRESS
January 31, 2024
Daily Illini
We should ask ourselves what it means that the people who rescued the animal victims are on trial while the breeders and researchers abusing and killing them are let off with warnings at worst. It means that law enforcement agencies are actively upholding a system of violence.
PRESS
January 31, 2024
Daily Illini
TOP PRESS
January 30, 2024
The Guardian
If successful in Berkeley, a liberal San Francisco Bay Area town that’s often been at the forefront of US environmental policy, the method can be replicated elsewhere, [activists] say. “We can pave the path to abolishing factory farming,” said Cassie King, an organizer with Direct Action Everywhere, one of the groups that pushed for the measure.
TOP PRESS
January 30, 2024
The Guardian
PRESS
January 29, 2024
Politico
Direct Action Everywhere and other organizations hoped for statewide action with a bill in 2022 but it never got out of committee. Their argument, then as now in Sonoma County, is that concentrated animal feeding operations are inhumane, bad for the environment and a potential threat to public health.
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.
TOP PRESS
February 2, 2023
New York Times
“It was horrible cruelty to the pigs inside the chambers,” Jim Reynolds told me. “It’s a violation of federal law.” Reynolds is one of 90 veterinarians who signed an open letter saying that the process shown in the videos probably violates federal law on humane slaughter.
BLOG
November 30, 2022
Corporations seem more concerned with shielding the practices of their suppliers from the public than with the cruelty and disease documented in those farms. They know that the public would be horrified if they saw the truth. But what these corporations don’t understand is that repression often makes movements stronger. I’m not going to stop talking about what happens to animals, and I’m not going to stop documenting protests.
BLOG
November 24, 2022
Back in October, DxE's Lead Organizer Almira Tanner spoke at the inaugural AVA Summit. Check out her talk: Building a Mass Movement for Animals.
BLOG
November 7, 2022
Do your homework, get feedback, and find the simple story.
BLOG
September 20, 2022
Today, a coalition of advocacy groups filed an amicus letter to the California Supreme Court in support of this case, written by the First Amendment Coalition and signed by Greenpeace USA, ACLU of Northern California, Amazon Watch, Sierra Club, Center for Biological Diversity, and many more.
BLOG
September 19, 2022
Why is it that 60 years after the Freedom of Speech Movement, we can’t rally more than 200 people to fight for the future of our planet? Why is it that when we’re being faced with injustices like racism, fascism, worker abuse, animal abuse, income inequality, loss of reproductive rights and environmental destruction, one of the most progressive student bodies in the world barely rises up?
BLOG
September 18, 2022
Rose was the sole survivor of all the birds at McCoy’s that day, and amid the tragedy that occurred for the others, Rose’s story offered a glimmer of hope. The fact that her rescue was permitted was proof that they all deserved to be rescued, that even the police knew rescuing them was the right thing to do.
BLOG
September 10, 2022
The systems we have designed for animals are mentally abusive from the very beginning.
BLOG
August 23, 2022
The #SmithfieldTrial is moving to Washington County, Utah because the judge agreed it would be a challenge to find an impartial jury in Beaver County.
BLOG
August 16, 2022
Despite this supposed safeguard, if a local entity wants to take the lives of Canada geese, an application and a verbal statement over the phone grants instant permit approval from the USDA –which killed 26,000 Canada geese last year alone.
PRESS RELEASE
July 20, 2024
On Saturday evening, animal rights activists protested inside and outside of Miller & Lux, an upscale steakhouse in Mission Bay that is owned by celebrity chef Tyler Florence. The protesters were calling on Florence to cut ties with Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry. They marched and chanted through the restaurant, holding signs that read “Drop Petaluma Poultry” and “Stop Supporting Perdue’s Petaluma Poultry’s Criminal Animal Abuse.”
PRESS RELEASE
May 13, 2024
Berkeley student in Perdue poultry case now faces 1 felony and 3 misdemeanors
PRESS RELEASE
March 8, 2024
Today, in a stunning development, the State of Wisconsin moved to dismiss charges against three animal rights activists accused of rescuing three beagles from Ridglan Farms, one of the last two remaining large breeders of dogs for vivisection in the country. Judge Mario White granted the dismissal at a hearing this morning.
PRESS RELEASE
February 27, 2024
The demonstration highlighted the horrifying conditions in which Ridglan Farms confines thousands of beagles for experimentation... The action featured speeches from Stanford alumni and a former Stanford researcher.
PRESS RELEASE
January 27, 2024
Playing with characters and plot elements from the new film Chicken Run 2: Dawn of the Nugget, the protest featured “Zoe Rosenbird” coming to the rescue of sick, injured chickens and transforming the operation that tortured them into an animal sanctuary.
PRESS RELEASE
November 30, 2023
The University of Denver’s Animal Activist Legal Defense Project is working on the appeal. Attorney Chris Carraway said, “I often hear courts describe trials as a search for the truth. Mr. Hsiung’s trial was anything but. The press had limited access; trial participants were unconstitutionally gagged from the beginning; and the court bent over backwards to prevent the defense from detailing the chronic animal cruelty found which informed the intent behind the actions."
PRESS RELEASE
October 19, 2023
“The thousands of signatures we’ve collected this summer are a testament to how enthusiastic the people of Berkeley are about disassociating with these cruel industries that run counter to our values,” says Berkeley resident and DxE organizer Kitty Jones. “It is high time we move past a system of industrialized exploitation of animals.”
PRESS RELEASE
September 5, 2023
Activists say voter enthusiasm is high for a ban on factory farms in Berkeley after submitting more than 4,900 signatures to the Berkeley city clerk today, a large overshoot beyond the 3,000 required to get the measure on the ballot.
PRESS RELEASE
August 1, 2023
"The vast majority of Berkeley voters that we've talked to care about animals and the planet and are eager to sign on to this initiative,” says Almira Tanner, lead organizer of DxE.
