San Luis Obispo County animal activist sentenced to 90 days in jail

December 3, 2025

Zoe Rosenberg

By KAREN VELIE

A judge on Wednesday sentenced a 23-year-old woman with an animal sanctuary in San Luis Obispo County to 90 days in prison. A jury previously found Zoe Rosenberg guilty of conspiracy and trespassing after she entered a poultry plant and took four chickens.

Instead of voicing remorse during her sentencing hearing, Rosenberg spoke of her issues with slaughterhouses.

“I am filled with remorse for every animal I have failed to save,” Rosenberg said at her sentencing hearing. “To the little baby chick who is currently writhing in pain on the floor of a Perdue factory farm, the young rooster being violently slammed into a Perdue transport crate, and the terrified hen about to enter Perdue’s scalding tank while fully conscious, I am sorry.”

On June 13, 2023, Rosenberg and several others disguised as workers entered a poultry slaughterhouse north of San Fransisco. They put four chickens into buckets, loaded them into a vehicle, and left Petaluma Poultry.

Rosenberg snuck into Petaluma Poultry four times and attached GPS devices to 12 delivery vehicles before snatching the chickens.

After watching a documentary about activists “rescuing” chickens from an egg farm in Australia, at 12 years old, Rosenberg joined Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), an activist group focused on shutting down all slaughterhouses.

At 15 years old, Rosenberg chained herself to a gate outside the Cal Poly meat processing center in San Luis Obispo in an attempt to stop the slaughter of a cow.

Rosenberg hopped a fence at Cal Poly along with a woman who was also participating in the animal rights activism event. The two females then chained themselves to the gate and livestreamed the incident, with Rosenberg doing much of the talking.

The teen activist said she was nicknaming the cow “Justice.” Rosenberg said she wanted to take the cow to live at her Happy Hen Animal Sanctuary in San Luis Obispo County.

University police arrested Rosenberg for trespassing, but it appears charges were never filed.

In April 2022, Rosenberg chained herself to a basketball post during an NBA playoff game between the Memphis Grizzlies and Minnesota Timberwolves. She was protesting Rembrandt Farms, which is owned by then Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor. Law enforcement again arrested Rosenberg, who was then a University of California, Berkeley student.

Her supporters argue Rosenberg’s health issue should preclude her from serving jail time. In September, she was hospitalized with gastroparesis, a partially paralyzed stomach, a complication of her diabetes, according to her supporters. She was given a feeding tube in the hospital, which she remains on today.

“Jailing Ms. Rosenberg for the nonviolent rescue of chickens worth less than $25 is unconscionable,” said Roesenberg’s attorney Chris Carraway. “Sonoma County has put Ms. Rosenberg’s life at risk all to protect a violent, multibillion dollar industry from the idea conveyed by Ms. Rosenberg’s actions: that farmed animals deserve to live peacefully at sanctuaries rather than have their throats slit to satisfy our tastebuds.”