Perdue's Petaluma Poultry

Sonoma County, California

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Ask Sonoma County District Attorney Carla Rodriguez to finally prosecute Petaluma Poultry for years of criminal animal cruelty. Plus, urge Trader Joe's to cut ties with Petaluma Poultry.

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For years, investigators with Direct Action Everywhere have been exposing criminal animal cruelty and rampant disease at factory farms in Sonoma County operated by Petaluma Poultry, a subsidiary of poultry giant Perdue Foods. Instead of prosecuting these companies, the Sonoma County District Attorney has gone after the whistleblowers and animal rescuers. On November 30, 2023, DxE investigator Zoe Rosenberg was arrested on multiple felony warrants and later charged with five felonies for the rescue of four sick chickens from Perdue's Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse in June 2023.

Zoe was forced to wear a GPS ankle monitor and follow other strict pretrial release conditions for 20 months while awaiting trial. After a back-and-forth where certain charges were dismissed, filed, and dismissed again, Zoe went on trial September-October 2025 facing one felony conspiracy charge and three misdemeanors, including two types of trespass and tampering with a vehicle. On Oct. 29th, after a nearly 7-week-long trial where the court severely limited what animal cruelty evidence the jury could see or even hear about, Zoe was convicted of all four charges.

On Dec. 3rd, Zoe was sentenced to 90 days in jail and two years of probation for an act of compassion that saved four lives. She is ordered to turn herself in on December 10th. She will serve the first 30 days of her sentence in the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility before becoming eligible to apply for jail alternatives for the final 60 days of her sentence.

Jailing someone for saving neglected animals is already outrageous, but given Zoe’s medical vulnerabilities, this jail sentence is terrifying. Zoe has lived with Type 1 diabetes since childhood and she relies on an insulin pump, which the Sonoma County jail threatened to remove when she was first arrested. She also remains on a feeding tube due to gastroparesis, a serious complication that hospitalized her right before trial. Zoe depends on medical equipment and care the jail has already threatened to take away. Yet, despite these risks and despite her nearly two years of perfect compliance with pre-trial conditions, Judge Kenneth Gnoss chose to send Zoe to jail anyway.

Zoe was represented by Chris Carraway, Staff Attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, and attorney Kevin Little. She is appealing her conviction, including several of the court’s rulings, such as its refusal to allow her to present a necessity defense and severe restrictions on what animal cruelty evidence the jury was allowed to see.

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Dear District Attorney Rodriguez,

I urge you to prosecute animal cruelty, not animal rescue. National polls consistently show overwhelming public support for strong legal protection for animals. Yet, countless investigations have shown that animal-using industries routinely violate animal welfare laws with no repercussions. It is time for a change.

Your office should be working with whistleblowers and rescuers to protect animals from abuse. Prosecuting these good samaritans who expose animal mistreatment is wildly out of line with the values of the public. A 2015 Gallup poll¹ found that a third of Americans believe “animals deserve the exact same rights as people to be free from harm and exploitation,” a 2022 YouGov poll² found that nearly half of Americans believe that animal cruelty laws in the U.S. are not strict enough, and a 2024 poll by Positive Sum Strategies³ found that 68% of Americans believe it should not be a crime to take an animal out of an environment where they are being mistreated.

The same sentiments are evidenced by two recent acquittals of animal rescuers. In October 2022, a Utah jury issued a groundbreaking “not guilty” verdict⁴ for two DxE investigators who openly rescued sick piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory pig farm. In March 2023, a California jury acquitted⁵ two more DxE investigators of theft charges for rescuing two sick chickens from a slaughter truck.

In many situations, the law already clearly asserts that rescuing an animal is not a crime. 14 US states have passed “right to rescue” laws to provide civil or criminal protection for people who rescue distressed animals from motor vehicles. Moreover, the common law doctrine of legal necessity provides that it is a defense to a crime if the act was necessary to prevent some greater harm. Law professors, including property law expert Professor Kristen Stilt at Harvard, have opined⁶ that the necessity defense applies to open rescues at commercial animal operations.

Prominent journalists, organizations, and cities have also chimed in to support the right to rescue, including in this New York Times article⁷ headlined “Rescuing Farmed Animals from Cruelty Should be Legal.”

Your office’s resources could be much better spent investigating and stopping crimes against animals. It is essential to address the root cause of the problem rather than targeting those attempting to bring attention to it. All animals deserve to be rescued from situations of distress and exploitation.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

References:
1. https://news.gallup.com/poll/183275/say-animals-rights-people.aspx
2. https://today.yougov.com/society/articles/42696-american-support-strengthening-laws-animal-cruelty
3. https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/eg07dfxhjq2n8vg6iejde/Positive-Sum-Strategies.pdf
4. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/08/science/animals-rights-piglets-smithfield.html
5. https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/23647682/factory-farming-dxe-criminal-trial-rescue
6. https://animal.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/DxE-Amicus-Brief.pdf
7. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/02/14/opinion/foster-farms-chicken-slaughterhouse-animal-cruelty.html

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Meet the Defendant

Zoe Rosenberg

Zoe is a UC Berkeley student, TEDx speaker, factory farm investigator, and animal rescuer. When she was 11 years old, she founded Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary, a nonprofit organization that has now saved over 1,000 neglected or abandoned animals.

Perdue's Petaluma Poultry

Sonoma County, California

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Meet the Defendant

Zoe Rosenberg

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