Animal activists who saved sickly piglets from Smithfield Foods set ‘right to rescue’ precedent

On Saturday, animal activists celebrated after a jury acquitted two men who had been facing more than five-and-a-half years in prison for felony burglary and theft charges stemming from a 2017 incident when the men removed two sickly piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory in Utah.

The landmark decision of not guilty, established the legal “right to rescue” animals in immediate need of care. The non profit organization, Direct Action Everywhere, is a global network of activists working to achieve revolutionary social and political change for animals in one generation. The case was “a culmination of a more than a five-year pursuit that multiple agencies, including the FBI and the Utah attorney general’s office,” reported The Intercept.

The case began when DxE investigators infiltrated a massive pig farm in the Utah desert – a facility owned by Smithfield/WH Group, the world’s largest pig killing company. The investigators filmed the horrific conditions showing animal abuse and other illegal activities and rescued two piglets: Lily, who had a severe leg injury, and Lizzie, who was malnourished and nursing on a shredded nipple.

Wayne Hsiung and Paul Picklesimer, members of the animal protection group, took the piglets to an emergency veterinary hospital for life saving care, and then they were transferred to an animal sanctuary in Colorado where the pigs still live.

Hsiung is a former Northwestern Law visiting professor who represented himself. He addressed the jury:

I don’t actually want you to acquit us on a legal technicality. I want you to acquit us as a matter of conscience. There’s a big difference between stealing and rescue. If you help to establish the ‘right to rescue’ companies will be a little more compassionate to creatures under their stewardship. Governments will be a little more open to animal cruelty complaints. And maybe, just maybe, a baby pig like Lily won’t have to starve to death on the floor of a factory farm.

We all have a duty to be kind. And your decision today, if you make a good one, will make the world a little bit of a kinder place, even for a baby pig of a factory farm.

Wayne Hsiung Direct Action Everywhere

Prosecutors, on the other hand, tried to convince the jury that these were men trying to cause trouble and repeated the words “animal liberation” to scare the jurors. Factory farms have been shielded for years from prosecution, and the animal cruelty has been swept under the barn boards for years. The Direct Action Everywhere investigation was done to find out if Smithfield had followed through on their promises to stop using two-foot by seven-foot gestation crates that make it impossible for the pregnant sows to even turn around.

The rescuers discovered rows of the gestation crates despite the promise to stop using them and led to a probe against the company for misleading consumers.

Prosecutors had tracked down the two piglets and performed DNA tests on them to prove they were from Smithfield Farms. The piglets had been only a week old when taken were then valued at $84.40 total.

And now the “right to rescue” will draw more public scrutiny. The United States Supreme Court will be hearing arguments over California’s ban on gestation crates.

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