Direct Action Everywhere – DxE
BREAKING: The felony case against Wayne Hsiung and Paul Darwin Picklesimer for rescuing turkeys from a Utah farm in 2017 was just “dismissed by compromise.”
The company and prosecutor agreed that “the criminalization of this nonviolent investigation and rescue is unnecessary.”
This is a step toward the #RightToRescue!
Background: In January 2017, the six activists entered a farm in Moroni, Utah, that supplies turkeys to Norbest, a large company that aggressively markets itself to the public as selling “mountain-grown” turkeys who are treated with particularly humane care.
Its marketing materials feature bucolic photographs of Utah nature, designed to create an image that its turkeys are raised in fresh and healthy natural settings, accompanied by assurances that its “practices are humane” and ethical, “with the health and comfort of the birds of paramount importance.”
What the activists found at the farm was something radically different: tens of thousands of turkeys crammed inside filthy industrial barns, virtually on top of one another.
The activists say the animals were suffering from diseases, infections, open wounds, and injuries sustained by pecking and trampling one another.
Countless chicks and adult turkeys were barely able to stand, or were lying in their own waste, close to death.
The activists, all volunteers with the animal rights group Direct Action Everywhere, or DxE, filmed and photographed the conditions inside the farm.
“In my 20 years of investigating animal abuse, I’ve never seen conditions this horrifying at a corporate farm,” Hsiung told the Intercept.
“We saw animals that looked dead but were still breathing; animals, languishing, who had virtually been pecked to death; many animals collapsed on the ground in their own feces and filth.
It was as bad as it gets.”
The activists also rescued three turkeys who were clearly suffering from extreme disease and injury and on the brink of death, part of a tactic known as “open rescue,” in which activists choose a symbolic handful of animals from industrial farms who are close to death, provide them with veterinarian care, and then publicly post film of their recovery at a shelter.
The three birds removed from the farm have no commercial value, because they were virtually certain to die within days, if not hours.
DxE activists estimate that up to 25 percent of animals at industrial farms die before they can make it to the slaughterhouse due to the conditions in which they are kept.
In November 2017, DxE published video and photographic findings from its investigation of the Norbest-supplying farm. The publishing of the investigation was highly embarrassing to Norbest, as the materials received substantial local press coverage.
The activists also rescued three turkeys who were clearly suffering from extreme disease and injury and on the brink of death, part of a tactic known as “open rescue,” in which activists choose a symbolic handful of animals from industrial farms who are close to death, provide them with veterinarian care, and then publicly post film of their recovery at a shelter.
The three birds removed from the farm have no commercial value, because they were virtually certain to die within days, if not hours.
So severe and horrifying was the abuse and disease documented by DxE that Norbest executives proclaimed themselves highly “disturbed” by what they saw.
The Fox report filmed Norbest CEO and President Matthew Cook watching the video for the first time.
Cook said he felt “deep disappointment” at what he saw, adding: “This just shouldn’t happen.”
The company then issued a formal statement on its site, proclaiming itself “deeply disappointed that our standards were not upheld by the farmer in question.”
Given that Norbest itself admits that the conditions revealed by DxE were horrifying, and given that it led to reforms, why would the activists be prosecuted for their investigation?
And given that they took nothing of commercial value, why would they be prosecuted for felony theft charges that, aggregated, carry a possible punishment of 10 years in prison?
For their successful efforts to expose these abuses and force reforms, Hsuing (lawyer, founder of the activist group Direct Action Everywhere, and lead investigator) and his five fellow activists now face prosecution and the possibility of prison terms.
Thus appears the same dynamic seen in so many other American realms, from torture to illegal spying to Wall Street fraud: The most powerful actors responsible for the most egregious acts are immunized from consequences, while the only ones punished are the ones who expose them.
And I mean…We are glad to hear the great news.
Thanks to the team for the great work!
Stealing a live animal is a punishable offense, but stealing its life is fine.
This is how thieves and criminals think, and move on that way because they simply legalized their crimes according to this principle and have gotten through for decades.
Through such actions the naive consumer learns where his “happy thanksgiving turkey” comes from.
And the meat industry gives up and finally learns that not everything that does not suit them can be criminalized
Good this way.
Whether the meat consumers wake up after these videos and find that the meat industry not only tortures animals, but also deceives them as consumers is questionable.
The fact is that with every new scandal the meat industry gets serious cracks, and so the likelihood of its disintegration increases.
My best regards to all, Venus
World Animals Voice 
“Stealing a live animal is a punishable offense, but stealing her life is fine.
This is how thieves and criminals think…”
Exactly, the world is twisted.
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