While most of us try to stay on the right side of the law, for some animal rights extremists getting arrested is their goal. They crave the media attention and are eager to go to trial. This gives them yet another venue to advocate their belief that animal agriculture is inherently cruel and unacceptable, and their actions against farmers and ranchers, including break-ins, theft and large-scale protests are necessary — even if they go against the law (which they also believe to be unjust).

The best example is Direct Action Everywhere (DXE), who have made “open rescues” in which they even livestream their own crimes as a trademark of their activism. While unfortunately in many cases they don’t face consequences at all, they have faced charges in a few instances that have gone all the way to a trial. Unfortunately, the results of these trials have been a mixed bag for animal agriculture. In December 2021, DXE co-founder Wayne Hsiung was convicted of larceny and breaking and entering for taking a goat from a farm in North Carolina in 2018. In October 2022, a jury in Utah came to a different conclusion following a weeklong trial involving Hsiung and two other DXE activists taking piglets from a hog farm in Utah in 2017.

Despite admitting that they did in fact enter the farm without permission and took the piglets, the activists were apparently able to convince the jury to find them not guilty with emotionally compelling arguments about their intention to save animals. Hsiung asked the jury to “acquit us as a matter of conscience” and insisted that “there is a big difference between stealing and rescue.”

Following along with tweets and media coverage from the trial, I was fairly surprised by the outcome, although I became increasingly concerned the longer the jury deliberated (which they returned on a Saturday in order to do). According to a New York Times piece by Hsiung following the trial, the jurors concluded that the activists lacked the intent to steal, just to document, and that the piglets they took had no monetary value to the company they were taken from, so they could not be stolen. Hsiung claims to have spoken to a juror who said his “claim to conscience” was effective.

The outcome of this trial should cause significant concern among the animal agriculture community, as activists have been vindicated for taking unlawful actions that put the health and safety of livestock and poultry at risk in order to promote a false narrative. DXE is heralding the verdict as a major victory, and are holding a “Smithfield Trial Summit” in Denver this weekend in conjunction with the University of Denver Activist Defense Project. The event is billed as an opportunity to “identify key learnings to apply in future animal rights litigation.” Allegedly, jurors in the Utah trial will be speaking at the event about their decision to acquit.

Activism will have a few more days in court in 2023. Preliminary hearings were held in December in Sonoma County, California, regarding several mass protests and “rescues” conducted there in recent years, and the judge ruled that the case would proceed to trial on all charges. In March, three DXE activists will go to trial in Wisconsin for the theft of three dogs from a research facility in Wisconsin. That same month, two activists will face charges in California stemming from the theft of chickens from a transport truck outside of a plant in September of 2021.

We’ll be staying tuned to these trials (and the resulting media coverage) and what they’ll mean for meat and animal agriculture. If you’re concerned about safeguarding the future of animal agriculture, I’d recommend keeping an eye on them as well.

Animal rights extremism set to go back on trial in 2023

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