Great News! Utah Jury Acquits DxE Rescuers of Piglets Suffering in Horrific (Typical) Smithfield Operation

New York Times: “Animal Rights Activists Are Acquitted in Smithfield Piglet Case”

An image released by the activist group Direct Action Everywhere from its 2017 raid on a Utah factory farm from which Wayne Hsiung, right, and Paul Darwin Picklesimer rescued two piglets. Credit: Direct Action Everywhere

Excerpt from NYT article, Oct. 8, 2022

The Utah trial highlighted what the defendants argued is a lack of transparency for the treatment of animals at large corporate farms.

Wayne Hsiung, one of the defendants [Paul Darwin Picklesimer was the other defendant], said he was stunned by the verdict, given that the judge had not let the jury consider any testimony explaining why the activists had targeted the farm, filmed their incursion and then taken two sick piglets on their way out.

“This is a resounding message about accountability and transparency,” Mr. Hsiung, 41, said in an interview after the jury’s decision. “Every company that is mistreating its animals and expecting that government and local elected officials will just go along with them because they have them in their pockets will now realize that the public will hold them accountable, even in places like Southern Utah.”

“Instead of trying to put us in prison,” he added, “The better thing to do is just take care of your animals.”

Learn more:

• The Most Absurd Miscarriage of Justice You’ve Never Heard Of
• Acquittal of “open rescue” activists rattles factory farms from Utah to China
• Open Rescues: How UPC Introduced This Strategy to U.S. Activists

“I am proud of the fact that our organization, United Poultry Concerns, introduced the concept and practice of Open Rescue to U.S. animal activists at our historic Forum on Direct Action for Animals, June 26-27, 1999, when we brought Australian animal rights activist Patty Mark to speak. It was the brilliant, passionate strategist Patty Mark and her team who pioneered the concept and practice of Open Rescue as opposed to rescues by anonymous masked rescuers.

When I first started writing this essay on Open Rescues I thought I would discuss the Animal Liberation Front (ALF) practice of concealment versus disclosure of personal identity as a strategy for achieving animal liberation through appeals to public perception and public conscience. But as I sifted through my files looking at the faces of animal liberators both masked and unmasked, as well as at undercover rescue scenes in both video format and verbal evocation, I decided that, important as the mask question may be from the standpoint of public perception, of equal and perhaps more fundamental importance is that of the rescuers’ overall body language and the expression of their hands in a videotaped rescue intended for general audiences. When it comes to faces, it seems that the most important ones to be shown in a rescue operation taped for public viewing are the faces of the animals themselves. Those faces and the suffering they express tell the story of their terrible lives.” ‑ Karen Davis