By Gabriella Sotelo for Sentient Climate.
Broadcast version by Danielle Smith for Keystone State News Connection reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
Farms across the U.S. are still struggling to contain the spread of avian flu. The virus has infected farms in all 50 states since the beginning of the outbreak, according to the CDC. Two states - Pennsylvania and Georgia - have recently declared themselves bird-flu free, after stepping up testing efforts and biosecurity protocols. Yet the ongoing spread nationwide - both on factory farms and from infectious migratory birds - raises questions about what a "bird-flu free" announcement really means for the U.S. food system.
Large confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) can house over 125,000 broiler chickens or 82,000 laying hens at a time, creating a perfect environment for diseases like bird flu to spread. Similarly, large cattle farms may house over 1,000 cattle while dairy CAFOs can house 700 or more dairy cattle.
Pennsylvania state officials announced that they reached "HPAI-Free," or bird-flu free status in their dairy industry in February. By March, Georgia Agriculture Commissioner had also announced poultry operations in the state were "HPAI-Free."
Achieving "free from bird flu" status requires strict biosecurity protocols and significant collaboration between local, state and federal authorities, according to industry researchers. The USDA sets national guidelines for monitoring and testing, which each state adapts to its specific needs. In other words, states can implement their own testing strategies, but these are based on USDA guidelines, and it's the USDA that confirms the findings.
No matter how thorough the protocol, Corinne Bromfield, a University of Missouri extension swine veterinarian with a background in biosecurity, says even the best biosecurity plan on paper is still very difficult to enact on an actual farm. "For something that is transmitted by wild birds, we can only take the steps that we can control," Bromfield tells Sentient.
State Bird Flu Containment Strategies, Explained
In January 2025, Georgia confirmed its first bird flu case in a commercial poultry flock. Georgia raises around 1.4 billion broiler chickens and 18 million layer hens at any given time, making it one of the nation's leading chicken producers. The state responded quickly to the outbreak, containing the virus within 48 hours (according to a press release from state officials) and suspending all in-state poultry activities, including exhibitions and sales.
Tom Tabler, extension poultry specialist at the University of Tennessee Extension Service, told Sentient by email that the steps for containment include "quarantine, depopulation, disposal, cleaning, disinfecting, testing and time," including both state and federal guidelines.
Meanwhile, Pennsylvania, ranked 8th in total dairy production in the U.S, took a proactive testing approach to prevent the spread of bird flu in dairy herds. Since late November 2024, the state's Animal Diagnostic Laboratory System has tested over 22,000 bulk milk samples from nearly all of its dairy farms, according to the state's official press release. Pennsylvania has remained one of 33 states with no confirmed cases of bird flu in cattle, at least as of this publication date, according to USDA data.
When avian influenza is first detected in a flock, producers are supposed to report sick or dead birds to their state veterinarian or a state animal health official, according to USDA's Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) guidelines. If the virus is confirmed, the USDA steps in to assist with the inventory for indemnity, investigation and depopulation.
Here, the term depopulation means wiping out an entire flock at once, as quickly and cheaply as possible. Producers often rely on an inexpensive slaughter strategy called "ventilation shut down plus." Most birds die of heat stroke or suffocation during the process, with any surviving birds typically killed by hand. Producers also must create a flock plan, which should include steps for getting rid of the virus and getting the farm back into production.
To eliminate bird flu in U.S. dairy herds, the USDA has developed a National Milk Testing Strategy (NMTS) that includes a combination of silo monitoring at dairy processing plants and mandatory testing for interstate movement of lactating dairy cattle.
A state must complete at least four rounds of monthly testing with negative results in order to achieve official "unaffected" status. Pennsylvania is one of nine states that, as of this publication date, has been listed as "unaffected" on the NMTS page. If a state's dairy herd tests positive, the producer is supposed to quickly detect and respond to affected herds, including increasing biosecurity protocols and using contact tracing to pinpoint the spread.
These strategies help to mitigate the spread of bird flu, but maintaining bird-flu free status is an ongoing challenge that can be undone at any time.
Biosecurity Protocols Can Be Quickly Undone
Much like any other virus, bird flu won't be deterred by a border on a map. The virus is unpredictable, threatening to resurface at any time. Containing bird flu spread then requires constant vigilance, as experts tell Sentient that any lapse in biosecurity can undo years of efforts.
Even the best on-farm protocols can't control for wild birds entirely. "We're doing everything that we can to minimize the risk to the animals that are under our control," Bromfield says, "but we also have this added layer of animals that are not under our control."
Pennsylvania state officials are aware of the challenge, it seems. "We are not out of the woods yet, and the threat demands that we keep our guard up," Pennsylvania Agriculture Secretary Russell Redding said in the February 12 press release.
States must remain prepared to implement emergency control measures at a moment's notice - ready to establish control zones around affected farms and halt the movement of chickens and cows.
"We're always going to have migrating animals that happen to come through areas that we live in or our animals live in," Bromfield says.
Tabler, a poultry scientist, had a similar warning. "Migratory birds or a lapse in biosecurity could easily start the whole process over again," he wrote in an email to Sentient.
Factory Farms and Wild Birds Keep Threat Levels High
Biosecurity protocols do not address a persistent factor for disease spread - the conditions in which factory-farmed poultry are raised. With tens of thousands of birds confined in cramped, unsanitary spaces, factory farms are the ideal breeding grounds for diseases like bird flu.
Overcrowding combined with massive amounts of waste can make it nearly impossible to contain the spread of pathogens. On top of this, wild birds help to spread the disease, making confinement to any one farm exceptionally difficult.
Currently, the standard approach to outbreaks is depopulating - killing infected flocks en masse, often with methods that are cheaper and less humane than standard slaughter methods - and large-scale operations have received indemnity payments for their losses. A December 2024 report from the USDA found that the indemnity program was failing to incentivize producers to take increased biosecurity precautions. Changes to the program were subsequently instituted, though the payout scheme has already resulted in record profits for leading egg producer Cal-Maine.
For smaller farms or backyard poultry owners, maintaining biosecurity measures is also an ongoing challenge, thanks to increased exposure to wild birds and their droppings. Without the infrastructure or resources available to large-scale commercial operations, these smaller operations can be quickly wiped out.
The Bottom Line
While states like Georgia and Pennsylvania have declared themselves bird-flu free, the threat from avian flu is far from over in any part of the country. The virus continues to threaten the food system and public health, as risk of a larger pandemic - currently low - looms overhead. The process to contain the virus is ongoing, as any new outbreak can quickly undo progress, demonstrating the fragile nature of any bird-flu free announcement.
Gabriella Sotelo wrote this article for Sentient.
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By Seth Millstein for Sentient.
Broadcast version by Farah Siddiqi for California News Service reporting for the Sentient-Public News Service Collaboration
In 2023, UC Berkeley student and activist Zoe Rosenberg removed four severely ill chickens from a slaughterhouse truck in Petaluma, California, and brought them to an animal sanctuary. Now, she's facing over five years in prison. Rosenberg's trial is scheduled for later this year, and her allegations tell a story of horrific conditions at ostensibly "free-range" chicken farms, as well as the steep uphill battle activists face in convincing law enforcement to even investigate allegations of animal cruelty on factory farms.
Rosenberg is an activist with Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), a Bay Area-based animal rights organization. In addition to supporting ballot propositions and hosting conferences, DxE carries out undercover investigations of slaughterhouses and factory farms. In some cases, its activists rescue ill and imperiled animals from such facilities; this is what's known as "open rescue," a popular tactic among some animal rights activists.
The prospect of risking prison time for saving a few chickens, who are routinely sold for less than $20 apiece, may seem outlandish. But DxE activists like Rosenberg see it as a necessary risk to accomplish their ultimate goal: the complete abolition of slaughterhouses and factory farms.
"I think that if people don't take action and don't risk their freedom to create change, nothing will ever change," Rosenberg, who's currently wearing an ankle monitor while out on bail, tells Sentient. "We've seen time and time throughout history that it has been the sacrifices of the very few that have changed the world."
Petaluma Poultry did not respond to Sentient's request for comment on this story, but a company spokesperson denied DxE's claims to the San Francisco Chronicle, characterizing the group as "extremist" and its efforts as "theft."
What Is Open Rescue?
In essence, open rescue is the act of removing animals from dangerous or harmful environments without permission from the person, company or facility that oversees said animals. Those who carry out open rescues don't hide what they are doing, and often publicize their actions. Animals that are removed via open rescue are typically provided with medical care and/or taken to animal sanctuaries.
The goal of open rescues, which date back to at least the early 1980s, is not only to provide relief for the animals in question, but also to highlight the conditions in which farm animals are held, and to normalize the act of rescuing them. But it's a controversial practice, even among activists, and law enforcement officials generally treat open rescues as acts of theft, trespassing or other crimes.
This often leads to prosecution, but in the eyes of open rescue advocates, this isn't entirely a bad thing. Prosecutions often bring media attention and publicity to both the topic in question and the relevant laws surrounding that topic. Rosenberg's case, for instance, draws attention not only to the conditions of factory farms, but also to the fact that removing a few sick animals from a slaughterhouse can get you a half a decade in prison.
Do People Usually Go to Prison for Open Rescue?
Although charges are often brought in open rescue cases, they're frequently reduced or, in some cases, dropped entirely before trial. It's not uncommon for open rescuers to be acquitted, either; in a verdict that drew international headlines, DxE founder Wayne Hsiung and another defendant were facing 60 years in prison for rescuing two sick piglets from a Smithfield Farms facility in Utah, only to be acquitted of all charges.
That said, Hsiung did recently spend 38 days in Sonoma County jail for an open rescue in which he participated, so it's not unheard of for activists like Rosenberg to serve time for carrying out open rescues.
The Incident in Question
On June 13, 2023, Rosenberg entered a Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse partially disguised as an employee. A truck delivering chickens to the facility was parked outside, and Rosenberg spotted four chickens in the back of the truck who she says were "covered in scratches and bruises." She took them from the truck, left the slaughterhouse and both she and DxE publicized her actions on social media.
Rosenberg says that she intentionally took the chickens that "seemed like they most needed medical attention." Subsequent examinations found that all four birds were infected with Coccidia parasites; one of them also had a respiratory infection and an injured toe, while a third had a foot infection.
Five months later, Rosenberg was arrested and charged with five felonies relating to the June 13 rescue. These charges were later reduced, and as of this writing, she faces one felony conspiracy charge, two forms of misdemeanor trespassing charges, one misdemeanor theft charge and one misdemeanor charge of tampering with a vehicle. Her trial is scheduled for September 15, 2025.
The chickens she rescued were all treated for their illnesses, and are now living at an animal sanctuary.
A History of Animal Neglect At Petaluma Poultry
Petaluma Poultry, a subsidiary of the chicken giant Perdue, presents itself as a humane operation where, in the words of its website, "chickens are free to be chickens."
"Our houses are spacious, with room for birds to move about and exhibit normal behaviors in a low-stress environment open to fresh air," the company's website says. "Our outdoor spaces are at least half the size of the poultry house, and typically as big as the barn itself."
But Petaluma Poultry's advertising is a classic example of humane-washing, when companies try to appeal to animal welfare-minded consumers by depicting their products as more humanely produced than they actually are.
Petaluma Poultry and its contractors have been accused of criminal animal cruelty on a number of occasions, and footage filmed by undercover investigators in the company's farms and slaughterhouse paints a much different picture than the company's marketing.
In 2018, a whistleblower provided DxE with footage from McCoy's Poultry, a factory farm contracted by Petaluma Poultry, that showed chickens collapsed on the ground, unable to stand or walk and surrounded by the corpses of other chickens. Shortly thereafter, Sonoma County Animal Services seized 15 chickens from McCoy's Poultry; six were already dead, while the other nine were injured, malnourished, unable to stand and exhibited signs of distress, according to a subsequent medical report. The facility was later shut down.
In 2023, another activist who infiltrated Petaluma Poultry's slaughterhouse said that she saw workers cutting into chickens while they were still alive, as well as evidence that chickens had been abused, tortured and boiled alive during the slaughter process. They also obtained documents showing that, on a single day in April, over 1,000 chickens were deemed unfit for human consumption after they were slaughtered due to suspicion that they had blood poisoning.
Prior to her arrest for the June incident, Rosenberg herself was involved in a separate DxE investigation of a Petaluma Poultry facility in 2023, where she recorded footage of more chickens suffering in the facility.
"I documented chickens who were collapsed on the floor of their factory farms, too weak to stand, unable to get to food and water, and slowly dying of starvation and dehydration," Rosenberg says. She ended up rescuing two of those chickens as well, both of whom required extensive medical care.
It remains unclear whether authorities prosecuting or investigating these allegations of criminal animal cruelty? And if not, how come?
Rosenberg Raised Allegations of Animal Welfare Abuses
Poultry is the most widely consumed meat in the U.S. and the world, yet there are no federal laws that protect livestock chickens from mistreatment on the farm. The Humane Slaughter Act establishes some baseline requirements for the treatment of livestock, but it specifically exempts chickens from these protections.
In California, however, livestock chickens are protected under a number of different laws. In addition to Proposition 12, which requires poultry producers to give egg-laying hens a specific amount of living space, Section 597(b) of California's penal code makes it a felony to subject an animal to "needless suffering" or deprive them of access to sufficient food or water, among other things.
This law would appear to be relevant in the context of Petaluma Poultry. If a chicken at a factory farm is physically unable to stand (let alone walk), they will be unable to reach the feeding trays and water, and will eventually die of thirst or starvation. If a chicken is boiled alive because they were improperly stunned beforehand, it has suffered needlessly.
The aforementioned investigations uncovered evidence of both of these things happening at Petaluma Poultry and its contracted facilities. Both DxE and Rosenberg claim they've presented multiple law enforcement agencies with this evidence, only to be rebuffed or ignored.
"The most common thing we've had is agencies directing us to another agency, directing us to another agency, directing us back to the place where we started, and just kind of sending us around in circles," Rosenberg says. "We didn't get any helpful response. No one took action."
It was this inaction that led Rosenberg to take the four chickens from the back of the truck in June, she says. After doing so, she again presented her findings to law enforcement, specifically the Petaluma Police Department. This time, she got a response.
"They said they had a detective who wanted to have a call with me, and so I had like a 15-minute call with a detective from the Petaluma Police Department," Rosenberg says. "She very much approached the call from an angle of, you know, 'I'm concerned about the reports you are making.' And so I told her about the animal cruelty that has been documented there."
But Officer Corie Joerger, the detective in question, didn't follow up with her after their call, Rosenberg claims, and ignored her subsequent attempts at communication. A couple of weeks later, Joerger handed Rosenberg a warrant for her arrest regarding the June rescue.
In the preliminary hearing for Rosenberg's case, Joerger acknowledged that Rosenberg had made allegations of animal cruelty, but stated that she did not investigate the matter.
This inaction by law enforcement wasn't an isolated incident. When the investigation at McCoy's Poultry facility uncovered dead birds on the farm floor and others that were unable to move, Sonoma County Animal Services referred the matter to the county sheriff's office for potential prosecution. But no prosecution followed then, either.
Sentient has reached out to the Sonoma County Sheriff's Office, the Petaluma Police Department and Joerger for clarification on these reports, but as of this writing, none have offered any comments.
Petaluma Poultry Is More the Rule Than the Exception
The allegations against Petaluma Poultry might sound extreme. But in fact, many are par for the course on factory farms, and chicken farms in particular.
For instance, the USDA estimates that every year, around 825,000 chickens are boiled alive at slaughterhouses. This is not standard protocol, but rather, the result of standard protocol gone wrong.
At poultry slaughterhouses, chickens are typically hung upside down by their feet and pulled through an electrified pool of water, which is meant to stun them. After that, workers slit the chickens' throats, and after they've bled out, they're placed into boiling water. This is to soften the skin and make it easier to defeather them.
That's how it's supposed to work, at least. In actuality, though, one or both of those first two steps often fail; chickens are either inadequately stunned before their throats are cut, or their throats aren't fully slit, or both. When both of these processes fail, the chicken is inadvertently boiled alive, and feels every bit of pain associated with this.
Similarly, the fact that those chickens at Petaluma Poultry couldn't stand up or walk isn't an accident. Over the decades, farmers have selectively bred chickens to be as fat as possible, as this maximizes the amount of meat they can sell. According to the National Chicken Council, farmed chickens now grow to be over twice as large as they were 100 years ago in less than half the time.
This unnatural rate of growth has wrought havoc on their internal biology, however, and farm chickens now routinely suffer from a number of illnesses and adverse health conditions as a result, including bone deformities, heart attacks, chronic hunger, ruptured tendons and, most relevantly to Petaluma Poultry, difficulty standing up or walking.
Finally, Petaluma Poultry is far from the only chicken producer to make questionable use of the "free-range" label, which is ostensibly regulated by the USDA. In 2023, undercover footage taken from a Tyson Foods-contracted chicken farm in Virginia depicted employees of both the factory and Tyson freely acknowledging that the "free range" label doesn't actually mean anything, and that "free range" birds often "don't go outside."
Why Wasn't Petaluma Poultry Investigated by Law Enforcement?
Though it's unclear why local law enforcement hasn't pursued any investigations into the allegations against Petaluma Poultry, DxE's director of communications has some ideas.
"It would be a massive undertaking for any government agency, no matter how well-staffed they actually might be, to suddenly address the systemic animal cruelty that we know is happening in factory farms," Cassie King, director of communications at DxE tells Sentient. "If they put their foot in the door and acknowledge that it's their responsibility to address these crimes, then there's a landslide of new cases they need to take on, and it's just a huge amount of work."
It also bears mentioning that chicken farms are an enormous part of Petaluma's local economy, and have been for quite some time. Once referred to as "the egg basket of the world," Petaluma was the birthplace of several egg-related technologies at the turn of the century, and pumped out over a half a billion eggs every year at its peak in 1945.
Although the city isn't quite the egg powerhouse it once was, chickens are still big business in Petaluma. Though official estimates are difficult to come by, the city is home to at least seven chicken farms large enough to qualify as factory farms, and those facilities collectively house around 1.8 million chickens at any given time, according to a 2024 analysis by an activist group that opposes factory farms.
To be clear, there's no evidence that the poultry industry's strong presence in Petaluma has played any role in law enforcement's response to allegations of cruelty at the city's chicken farms. But the fact that the Petaluma Police Department publicly celebrates the city's poultry industry, and participates in the annual Butter and Eggs Day festival in a non-law enforcement capacity, is not lost on DxE activists.
Rosenberg Awaiting Trial
For her part, Rosenberg maintains that her actions were legal. She cites the doctrine of necessity, a legal theory holding that it's sometimes permissible to break a law if doing so prevents even greater harm from occurring.
"For example, if a kid is drowning in your neighbor's pool and no one is helping that kid, you have the right to trespass into your neighbor's yard to rescue the kid," Rosenberg says.
How this defense plays out in court remains to be seen, but it's essentially the same argument Hsiung's attorneys successfully used in the Utah case. In the meantime, Rosenberg says she's been encouraged by the public reaction to her case (Paris Hilton is a prominent supporter), and doesn't regret her actions even if they do land her in prison.
"A few years of my freedom is worth significantly less than even one animal's entire life, and certainly less than four animals' entire lives," Rosenberg says. "And so it's absolutely worth it to me on that level."
Seth Millstein wrote this article for Sentient.
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