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
BLOG
April 5, 2025
Perdue's legal complaint is riddled with false accusations meant to malign nonviolent activists and keep the attention off its abuse of animals.
PRESS
April 4, 2025
Press Democrat
Agribusiness giant Perdue Foods and a director of operations at one of the company’s brands, Petaluma Poultry, have filed an injunction against the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere seeking to protect the executive from what they allege is “a campaign of terror.”
PRESS
April 4, 2025
Press Democrat
PRESS
March 30, 2025
SF Gate
"I want to know why Trader Joe's is continuing to support Perdue's animal cruelty," said Conrad De Jesus in the release, 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," De Jesus said. "It's time they cut ties with this awful company."
PRESS
March 30, 2025
SF Gate
PRESS
March 23, 2025
Press Democrat
A group of protesters from Direct Action Everywhere, a grassroots animal rights organization, over the weekend protested at the Santa Rosa home of Jason Arnold, the director of operations at Perdue Poultry’s Petaluma facility.
PRESS
March 23, 2025
Press Democrat
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
March 21, 2025
ABC 47 WMDT
DXE is protesting practices they say are taking place at Petaluma Poultry in California, Perdue’s subsidiary. So they traveled over 3,000 miles to the Corporate Office here in Maryland, says Zirbel. “We’ve had mostly positive reactions from the community driving by. A lot of them have seen and gotten our message. A lot of them agreeing I’ve spoken to a couple people now.”
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.”
PRESS RELEASE
March 20, 2025
PRESS
March 18, 2025
Fox 6 Milwaukee
When Wayne Hsiung and two of his colleagues from Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) entered Ridglan Farms in the middle of the night in 2017, their mission was to document everything in pictures and video. But that's not all. They removed three beagle puppies from stacked metal cages and - as alarms blared throughout the building - they rushed them into the darkness and fled.
PRESS
March 18, 2025
Fox 6 Milwaukee
PRESS
March 18, 2025
Fox 6 Milwaukee
A factory farm west of Madison that breeds beagle puppies for use in scientific experiments is facing both criminal and disciplinary investigations for mistreatment of animals. Ridglan Farms houses more than 3,200 dogs whose only purpose is to be used in - or sold for - scientific experiments.
PRESS
March 18, 2025
Fox 6 Milwaukee
TOP PRESS
January 18, 2023
Wired
Animal rights activists have captured the first hidden-camera video from inside a carbon dioxide “stunning chamber” in a US meatpacking plant.
TOP PRESS
October 25, 2022
Vox
The pigs’ essentially zero value is baked into the meat industry’s business model... 15 percent of piglets die before they’re finished weaning. The pork industry may slaughter over 125 million pigs a year, but they breed far more, knowing many will die from disease and injury.
TOP PRESS
October 18, 2022
New York Times
During the closing statements in the trial, in which I represented myself, I told jurors that a not-guilty verdict would encourage corporations to treat animals under their care with more compassion and make governments more open to animal cruelty complaints.
TOP PRESS
October 11, 2022
Democracy Now!
In a major victory for animal rights, a jury in Utah has acquitted two animal rights activists who each faced up to five and a half years of prison time for rescuing two sick piglets from Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms, one of the world’s largest pig farms.
TOP PRESS
October 8, 2022
The Intercept
“Whenever I think about the condition Lily was in and the desperation we felt when we saw her there, struggling and so small and so sick, a little baby in such a horrible, awful, brutal place,” Hsiung said in a video posted to Instagram, “we just wanted to get her out.” Animal rescue “is not the worst part of us as human beings. It’s the best of us.”
TOP PRESS
October 8, 2022
New York Times
Many animal welfare advocates viewed the trial as a display of corporate power, and a test of whether the meat industry can legally prevent the public from seeing the sometimes unsavory aspects of modern mass food production.
TOP PRESS
October 3, 2022
Fox 13 Salt Lake City
“They did a nonviolent action, and they saved the lives of two piglets who would have been discarded by the industry anyway.”
TOP PRESS
September 19, 2022
Harper's Magazine
Most readers care about humans, not pigs. What gets us going is a compelling main character facing many years in prison, not several million pigs spending a lifetime in circumstances that make prison look comparatively relaxing.
TOP PRESS
April 28, 2022
New York Magazine
Protests are often unpopular, but as this article shows, in the end, they tend to be right.
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.
BLOG
August 11, 2022
These stories - the story of Smithfield, the story of Lily and Lizzie, and the story of government and industry collusion - are too important to tell for us to just give in to intimidation and bullying.
BLOG
August 3, 2022
Let this story be a reminder that animals do fight for their freedom and that they participate in their own liberation.
BLOG
July 21, 2022
Activists gathered for a vigil exactly two years after the release of Unseen, a documentary that exposed the horrors inside Yosemite Foods, a slaughterhouse in Stockton, California, that kills 2,000 pigs every day.
BLOG
July 19, 2022
DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung recently shared the story of a very sick pig who was rescued from Farmer John. This is an excerpt from his Substack blog, The Simple Heart.
BLOG
July 5, 2022
Our signs read “Expose Smithfield’s Deathstar” referring to Smithfield’s Circle Four Farms in Milford, Utah, the largest pig farm in the country. While many criticized the tackiness and absurdity of the action, it garnered much needed media attention.
PRESS RELEASE
March 8, 2022
The coalition event featured attendees representing Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), Sunrise Bay Area and the CA Democratic Environmental Caucus.
PRESS RELEASE
February 23, 2022
Two defendants face years in prison after removing sick piglets from the largest factory pig farm in the U.S.
PRESS RELEASE
February 20, 2022
California Assemblymember Adrin Nazarian (D-Van Nuys) introduced a bill Friday to enact a moratorium on new factory farms and slaughterhouses statewide. Assemblymember Alex Lee (D-San José) is a joint author on the bill, AB 2764.
PRESS RELEASE
February 13, 2022
UC Berkeley administrators claim the world’s largest chicken producer doesn’t use factory farming
PRESS RELEASE
January 21, 2022
Demonstrators allege widespread criminal animal abuse by Iowa Select Farms
PRESS RELEASE
January 18, 2022
Prosecution moved to dismiss case in advance of hearing on expanding media access to trial
PRESS RELEASE
December 11, 2021
26 horses have died at the facility this year
PRESS RELEASE
December 5, 2021
Supporters say rescue of sick baby goat was an act of compassion
PRESS RELEASE
December 5, 2021
Protestors, including felony defendants, call for Rose’s Law: Animal Bill of Rights
