On misty hillsides in Sonoma County, Calif., cows graze under the shade of oak trees and lambs poke their snouts through white picket fences. The specialty markets and farm-to-table restaurants that abound celebrate the agricultural riches of a region that locals call “America’s Provence”: fresh eggs and locally produced pepper jack, not to mention world-class chardonnay.
The roughly 3,000 farms in the Northern California county have long had a reputation for being organic and humane, in a region where liberal values predominate.
But that has not been enough to spare them from a bitter feud with some of the country’s most extreme animal welfare activists.
The clash has involved lawsuits and restraining orders, heavily funded political campaigns and undercover videos of Sonoma County farm animals that have attracted the attention of celebrities such as Paris Hilton. Now, farmers and activists are waiting to see what transpires in a trial this month of a University of California, Berkeley, student for breaking into a local poultry farm and sneaking away four chickens that she says were being mistreated.
These are the actions of a new generation of radical activists, literate in the viral culture of social media and driven by the same goals as predecessors who sprayed fur coats with red paint in the 1980s. Organized by the group Direct Action Everywhere, they are seeking to end animal agriculture worldwide by breaking into farms and filming what they say are ill and abused hens, cows and other livestock.
In the Bay Area, organizers say they have focused on Sonoma County largely to make a point that a region that is “supposedly ethical and best of the best” still treats its animals poorly, said Cassie King, a spokeswoman for Direct Action Everywhere, which goes by DxE and is headquartered an hour south in Berkeley.
“We want to show that regardless of how they’re labeled, there’s suffering behind these products, and people are being deceived,” Ms. King said.
The fertile coastal land of Sonoma County once made it an appealing destination for Irish, Italian and German immigrants who settled the region in the 1800s and began to grow apples, wheat and wine grapes. They also found the pastures perfect for raising cattle and sheep.
Eggs initially became the big business, with so many millions shipped down the Petaluma River to a growing San Francisco that the city of Petaluma adopted the moniker “Egg Basket of the World” around the turn of the 20th century.
In more recent decades, vineyards have become a major agricultural moneymaker, while dairies and smaller farms have adopted organic and sustainable practices to gain a competitive edge. Petaluma Poultry was among the first to sell chicken with an organic label from the U.S.D.A. Many vineyards here are pioneers in regenerative agriculture that helps battle climate change. Clover Sonoma was the first dairy in the country to be certified by the American Humane Society.
“We have free-range cattle who live better than I do, with multimillion dollar views of the Pacific Ocean,” said Lynda Hopkins, a Sonoma County supervisor who has a backyard farm where she and her husband raise goats and ducklings.
The conditions do not matter much to DxE. The grassroots organization believes animals should have the same rights as humans, and should not be used for food in any way.
Its members once stormed a Costco store in San Francisco while drenched in fake blood to decry the living conditions of egg-laying hens. They protested at Chez Panisse, the famed Berkeley restaurant that popularized locally sourced California cuisine, to remind patrons that the rib-eye and grilled quail on their dinner plates had been “brutally killed for the mere crime of being different than ourselves.”
But DxE, founded in 2013, focuses primarily on “open rescues,” trespassing on farms or slaughterhouses that they accuse of inhumane treatment to film and remove animals they say need saving. In Sonoma County, the activists have repeatedly entered dairies as well as chicken and duck farms, where they have posted videos of animals in cramped quarters with open wounds, parasitic infections and broken limbs.
The group wants its viral clips, which often amass millions of views, to radicalize people, as opposed to fighting for more incremental steps toward animal liberation such as encouraging people to stop eating burgers or omelets, Ms. King said.
“Even at these humane, free-range, cage-free, organic, antibiotic-free farms, there are always dead animals left among the living. There are always violations of the law,” Ms. King said. “We’re really trying to build activists. We’re not going to change the system by converting people to veganism one by one.”
In Sonoma County on Sept. 15, Zoe Rosenberg, an activist with the group, will go on trial for a 2023 nighttime raid at Petaluma Poultry, known for its organic chicken. If convicted, prosecutors say she faces up to six years in jail.
Ms. Rosenberg, 23, says that she found chickens at Petaluma Poultry covered in scratches and bruises, including some with high fevers and serious infections. There was also evidence, she said, that birds were being scalded alive, instead of killed before broiling, because the slaughter lines were moving too quickly.
“We aren’t just killing animals on a mass scale. We are literally torturing them on a mass scale for every second of their lives,” said Ms. Rosenberg, who has been dedicated to animal rights since she started a chicken sanctuary in her parents’ backyard in San Luis Obispo, Calif., when she was 12.
Perdue Farms, the large meat processing company that owns Petaluma Poultry, has denied any wrongdoing and said that it maintains high animal welfare standards and investigates all claims of negligence. The company sued DxE this year for protesting outside the Sonoma County home of a company executive.
“DxE has a long history of making false and misleading claims to advance an extreme agenda that seeks to eliminate animal agriculture altogether,” a Perdue spokeswoman, Andrea Staub, said in an email.
Trader Joe’s, which sells Petaluma Poultry chicken under its own label, also sued DxE after protests at several of its stores in California this year. The grocery store chain says that activists removed items from people’s carts, shouted about animal cruelty and glued themselves to meat refrigerators and desks. The company could not be reached for comment.
DxE has not made many friends in Sonoma County. But David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University, said that because Sonoma County is overwhelmingly liberal — 71 percent of voters chose Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee, in last year’s presidential race — the activists may see more potential for change here than in the state’s more conservative Central Valley, home to much larger farms.
DxE helped get a first-in-the-nation measure on the ballot last November in Sonoma County that would have forced at least 10 large animal farms to close or downscale. Even in a region known for its family farms, a single egg farm might keep half a million hens in its barns. A slaughterhouse here might kill tens of thousands of birds each day.
The proposal met fierce opposition from Sonoma County farmers and pro-agriculture organizations nationwide, and the measure failed after receiving only 15 percent of the vote. But, Mr. McCuan said, DxE might not consider it that much of a loss.
“The point is not to win. The point is to draw attention,” he said. “What happens is it demonstrates that there is a core constituency, even in ‘America’s Provence,’ that supports them.”
The outcome of Ms. Rosenberg’s trial is hard to predict. While animal activists have been convicted in various cases, California jurors acquitted DxE activists in 2023 of charges that they had taken two chickens from a Foster Farms slaughterhouse.
Prosecutors called it stealing, but the activists, including Alexandra Paul, a former star on the television show “Baywatch,” said they were rescuing neglected animals, the way a person might break a window to rescue a dog trapped in a hot car.
“None of the defendants I’ve represented are afraid of a jury finding them guilty. Their priorities are the safety and well-being of the animals,” said Chris Carraway, an attorney at the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project at the University of Denver, who helped represent the activists in that case, and will also represent Ms. Rosenberg this month.
Farmers worry that an acquittal would further embolden DxE.
Doug Beretta, a third-generation dairy farmer, said that he and others feel unfairly attacked by a group trying to force veganism on the county. He spent $5,000 on a fence to prevent DxE from filming videos of calves in pens along a main road.
Jennifer Beretta, his daughter, started a TikTok account to try to show grassy pastures, orange sunrises and other behind-the-scenes images from the dairy farm to try to counter DxE’s narratives.
“We found there’s no real reasoning with them,” said Mr. Beretta, 62, whose organic farm supplies milk to Clover. “They have no understanding or no knowledge of what animal agriculture is, but when they portray it on the internet there’s not a lot we can do.”
Soumya Karlamangla is a Times reporter who covers California. She is based in the Bay Area.
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