Putting It on the Line for Animals

For members of Direct Action Everywhere’s “Open Rescue” team, the risks are real — getting attacked, picking up an infection, PTSD. When animal rights investigators surreptitiously enter facilities housing animals raised for food, whether the places are dubbed “humane” or not, they put themselves in danger, both physically and psychologically.

Open Rescue, in which activists enter and document on video the conditions inside facilities where animals are held, and rescue animals that are sick and/or injured, has begun to catch on in the United States. At the forefront is the animal liberation network Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an international, strictly volunteer operation that has as its mission total animal liberation.

“I had nightmares for months afterwards and I wasn’t sleeping well,” said DxE investigator Chris Van Breen of Berkeley, during a recent interview. Van Breen, whose day job is a plumber, said he’d also had flashbacks.

“There was this one turkey — ” he said, describing one DxE investigation into a Diestel Turkey farm in Northern California. “I spotted her. I thought she was dead. The others around her ran away the best they could when I came near. She just lay there and slowly lifted her head and looked at me.” Choking back tears, he said, “I really wanted to take her out, but she was in such bad shape, I knew we couldn’t.”

DxE, the international animal rights network which is strictly a volunteer operation has completed five onsite investigations, making multiple visits to each. They researched and reported on Petaluma Farms, a Whole Foods certified humane egg farm; Diestel Turney Ranch, another Whole Foods top-rated humane farm; JS West, an egg-laying facility; a dog meat farm and dog slaughterhouse in Yulin, China; and a Hormel Foods-owned Farmer John pig facility. In all five investigations DxE found jaw-dropping cruelty; there was nothing humane about how the animals were being raised.

DxE investigations have garnered a large amount of press — the Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and other publications, as well as television stories such as one featured on ABC Nightline.

Unlike most animal rights groups that investigate farmed animal cruelty, DxE members do not get jobs at farms and secretly film. The investigators don’t wear masks. They don’t do physical damage. They’re not paid. They simply enter the facilities late at night and in the early morning hours and film. Generally, the farms are hostile to visitors, especially visitors who arrive unannounced with video cameras.

Conducting investigations this way, allows DxE to focus on individual animals, which would arouse suspicion if done by an undercover employee, explained DxE co-founder Wayne Hsiung. “When people see these pictures of huge numbers of animals crammed together in cages, it’s hard for them to understand that these sentient beings are individuals, with individual personalities — individual likes and dislikes.”

For the group’s most recent investigation, DxE entered a Farmer John facility in King’s County, California, near Fresno. The place was just as terrible as anything the DxE investigators had ever seen: the overwhelming smell, the filth, the crowding and the deafening noise. “This one night, we weren’t able to get inside but we could hear all the sounds, the cries and the screams and smell the [stench],” said Samer Masterson. “The sound was like a torture chamber and these men were constantly yelling, like they were at a football game.” The workers were loading animals onto trucks to go to slaughter. “Just knowing this would be the pigs’ last day on earth…” Masterson’s voice drifted off.

The DxE investigators/rescuers are a diverse group: a lawyer, a movie/TV star, a long-time veteran of animal rights investigatory work, a software developer, a former makeup artist, several students and a former member of the Marine Corps. Yet they share a commitment to helping animals, as well as an outrage at the exploitation and murder of these sentient beings. “This is very important work we’re doing, literally saving lives and exposing the world to this,” said Masterson. “It’s so important. The rewards way outweigh the risks.”

An animal rights activist and investigator for 37 years, Chris DeRose sees this work as righting a wrong. The founder of Last Chance for Animals said over the phone from LA that he doesn’t have a pet and doesn’t have any special affection for animals. “To me this isn’t about some lovey-dovey thing, it’s a justice issue,” he said.

DeRose who was an actor and once played a mob boss on television has a crusty New Jersey manner. Still, it was a dog who’d been tortured in a vivisection lab dying in his arms that inspired his lifelong work. “I made a promise to that dog that I would do everything in my power to stop this.”

A veteran of the anti-war and environmental movements, TV and film star, Alexandra Paul said she’d been arrested 12 times for civil disobedience. While she’d participated in a hunt sabotage, going into an animal facility was a first for her. She said she felt no hesitation joining the DxE action at the Farmer John farm. “If I believe in something, [the risk] is worth it.”

The goal of DxE operations is to investigate, document and publicize the conditions at the facilities and to rescue sick and/or injured animals. Activists remove individual animals from cages or pens, wrapped in blankets and rushed to veterinarians for evaluation and treatment.

Physically, these animals have extensive problems from due to extreme selective breeding. Pigs, for example, are bred to grow so fast and so big, making them susceptible to heart attacks and other organ failure. Living in such horrible filthy conditions, they often ’re also likely to suffer from various antibiotic-resistant infections and illnesses. Smaller or injured animals are often unable to get enough food and water. They’re subject to dehydration, malnutrition and starvation. Since all the animals in these places experience such extreme sensory deprivation, some appear to go insane, engaging in near-constant aggression toward other animals or engaging in senseless repetitive behaviors such as relentlessly wagging their heads.

Finding long term housing and care for rescued animals can be very difficult. Sanctuaries for animals who have been raised for food are few and far between. Their resources of time, money and space are limited.

And finding people like Jackie Lawrence, people who have the courage and commitment to take these actions, can be a challenge. Jackie Lawrence, an investigator who works as a restaurant server in the Bay Area, confessed to having been anxious about participating in an investigation but pushed through her fears. “For me, I wanted to go inside and actually see the environment these animals have to endure their whole lives so that I could share that experience with others,” she said. “Seeing a video or a movie is not the same.”

Typically, when DxE does an investigation/open rescue, only a few people go inside while others stay outside as look-outs. They are particularly attentive to the sounds of cars approaching. It’s nerve-wrecking. “Your mind plays tricks on you,” said Lawrence. “You think you heard a car but there is no car or you see people in the shadows when it’s actually only shadows. You have to stay psychologically strong. You get used to the lights flashing on and off for no reason or suddenly the water going on.”

Lawrence has had her flashbacks too — “In some moments it just hits you, the sadness in their eyes.”

Lawrence’s partner, Jason Oliver, said he had to draw on his coping skills. “I’ve seen ‘Earthlings,’” he said. “I guess I’m more rational.

“It’s just so sad though — they’re in these concrete pens and they’re fighting,” he continued. “They have to fight for everything: water, food, space. There’s shit all over them. They’re coughing a lot.”

Like the investigators who go inside, the look-outs can feel vulnerable. Priya Sawhney and Samer Masterson were spotted when a car came slowly rolling by and shined a flashlight in their faces. “I thought this is it,” she said. “We’re caught.” Inexplicably the car went past them and disappeared into the darkness.

Because these operations take place in the wee morning hours, sleepiness becomes a problem. “You’re just so tired,” said Sawhney. “It’s hard to think straight and make decisions.”

One of the investigators, Sara Muniz, had served three years in the United States Marine Corps before becoming an animal activist. The maneuvers during the investigation were natural for her — crawling under the fences, navigating the mud, evading detection and walking without making a sound. “You have to pick up your feet,” she said. “You can’t shuffle.”

Muniz laughed: “After I left [the service], I never thought I’d have to use those skills.”

Despite the grief, there was almost a joy among the investigators we talked with. They seemed to have the deep satisfaction that comes from making a difference in somebody’s life or saving someone’s life.

“It’s the individual animals that we rescue,” said Wayne Hsiung. “Seeing them recover and get better makes it all worth it. And even the ones that don’t make it, like Chester.”

Chester was one of the three rescued piglets from Farmer John who had been taken to a sanctuary. A vet had concluded that the little pig had been born with a fatal heart defect, probably caused by the toxicity of the Hormel facility or maybe because of a lack of nutrition for his mother. “When we found him, he was too weak to stand and other piglets were attacking and sucking on him, said Hsiung. “Sadists couldn’t have devised a crueler environment than in that facility. And because of his illness he was in terrible pain. His death was not an easy one.

“Still, it makes me happy to know that at least he had three quiet, peaceful weeks in that beautiful sanctuary surrounded by people who really cared about him.”

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Leslie Goldberg is an animal rights activist, a lead investigator for the DxE investigatory team and a former investigative reporter for the San Francisco Examiner. She was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize. An artist, political cartoonist and writer, she holds a masters degree in interdisciplinary art from Goddard College.