[Update: On Friday, March 8, Judge Mario White dismissed the charges against all three defendants on a motion from the District Attorney's Office that was filed late the day before. Attorneys for two of the defendants opposed the motion to dismiss, which was done at the request of the "victim in this case," Ridglan Farms. The charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning the DA's Office could refile them at a later date. See update article published March 8.]
Paul Darwin Picklesimer is hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. And so, before flying to Madison this month to face trial on criminal charges stemming from a 2017 action at Ridglan Farms, an animal breeding and research facility near Mount Horeb, Picklesimer plans to “pay my last month’s rent and pack everything up” for long-term safekeeping. “I hope I won’t go to actual prison, but I’m willing to accept what comes.”
Picklesimer, 46, of Berkeley, California, is one of three defendants in the case, along with Wayne Hsiung, 42, also of Berkeley, and Eva Hamer, 32, who now lives in Portland, Oregon. All are charged with one count each of felony burglary and felony theft, with a potential maximum sentence of 16 years in prison and $35,000 in fines. The case is being prosecuted by the Dane County District Attorney’s Office; the planned five-day trial is set to begin March 18 before Circuit Court Judge Mario White.
The defendants, who belong to a California-based international group called Direct Action Everywhere (DxE), do not dispute doing what they are accused of doing — namely, entering Ridglan Farms without permission and leaving with three beagles, valued at $1,200 each. Indeed, according to the criminal complaint, it was the videos they posted on social media about a year later that led to their identification and arrest.
“We practice what is known as open rescue,” Picklesimer explains. “That is a tactic. And it’s based on the idea that these places in the animal exploitation industries, in general, succeed in part because they’re shrouded in secrecy. People don’t actually get to see what’s going on inside of them. And so our theory is, we want to go in and show everybody, show the public what’s really happening behind these closed doors, and do so without any shame.”
Ridglan Farms, in southwest Dane County, has more than 3,000 beagles, making it one of the nation’s largest dog-breeding facilities. (Its closest competitor in terms of size of operation, Envigo, was shut down in Virginia in 2022.) Satellite images show several large, oblong buildings. DxE, in a report, says its “investigators” in the April 2017 action “found many dogs wailing, howling and barking, while others were lethargic and utterly passive” and that “[t]he harsh fluorescent light appeared to be continuous. There were no soft beds, no toys, no access to sunlight, no human companionship.”
More than 100 animal rights activists from around the country are planning to attend the trial, perhaps more than the courthouse will be able to hold. Hsiung, a former lawyer and DxE co-founder, is representing himself. Hamer has a Madison-based defense lawyer, Payal Khandhar. Picklesimer will be represented by Chris Carraway, a staff attorney with the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, part of the Sturm College of Law at the University of Denver, a private college in Colorado. Its stated goal is “to serve as the world’s leading site for activist defense, advocacy, and coalition building.”
Carraway, in an interview, compares the people engaged in open rescue to those who break a car window to free a dog from deadly heat. “That same logic applies when you come across, you know, a baby chicken that is dying on the floor of the factory farm due to neglect or terrorized and mentally tortured dogs stacked in cages inside a place like Ridglan Farms.”
While Wisconsin, unlike some states, does not have an actual statute that protects people who break the law while providing aid to animals, Carraway says a long-standing legal principle known as “the doctrine of necessity” would still apply. He wants members of the jury to put themselves in the activists’ place, to see the rows of cages containing hundreds of dogs, “oftentimes covered in their own feces, acting psychotic by spinning around in a circle.” He hopes “their hearts and their compassion would lead them to feel the need to do the same thing.”
The Ridglan case is one of several in which DxE activists have sought to test such arguments. In October 2022, a jury in Utah acquitted Picklesimer and Hsiung of felony burglary and theft charges for stealing two piglets from a farm owned by Smithfield, the nation’s largest pork producer. This verdict was reached even though the judge in the case had barred testimony from the activists as to why they targeted the farm.
“This is a resounding message about accountability and transparency,” Hsiung told The New York Times at the time. “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.”
Direct Action Everywhere
On the outside: Defendants Hsiung, left, and Hamer with the beagles from Ridglan Farms.
Last March, a jury in California found former Baywatch star Alexandra Paul and a co-defendant not guilty of misdemeanor theft charges for snatching up two chickens from a truck outside a poultry farm. “This is how we shape history,” Paul said in a statement, “by using our privileges to confront unjust industries that exploit animals.”
But in November, Hsiung was sentenced to 90 days in jail and 24 months of probation on two counts of misdemeanor trespass and one count of felony conspiracy to trespass for taking chickens and ducks from two California farms. The jury deliberated for six days before reaching its verdict, which has since been appealed, in part because the judge refused to allow Hsiung to present evidence of animal cruelty at the farms. In the meantime, Hsiung remains free; special permissions must be obtained for him to share information during the Dane County trial with Picklesimer, one of a number of people with whom Hsiung is not supposed to have contact.
Picklesimer is optimistic that “Judge White is going to be fair” and allow testimony as to the activists’ intent. Even the limited amount of information about the rescued pigs that was allowed in the Utah case was enough to persuade the jury “that we kind of did the right thing.”
Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne, in an email exchange, declined to discuss his office’s handling of the case. On March 1, assistant DA Alexandra Keyes filed a motion to exclude certain evidence and defenses, including the necessity defense. Carraway, meanwhile, filed a motion to present affirmative defenses regarding the rescue of animals in harm. It says the defendants “found themselves face to face with dogs that were needlessly suffering” and accordingly “acted upon their compassion and conscience.” Hsiung is also seeking to present a religious freedom defense, based on his Buddhist beliefs. A hearing on these motions is set for March 8.
Asked why his office is investing the resources it will take to stage a five-day trial over the theft of three dogs together valued at less than $4,000, Ozanne replied: “If an individual wishes to exercise their constitutional right to a trial it is our job to present the case to the trier of fact.”
Ridglan Farms did not respond to an email seeking its perspective on the case. But in a “Victim Impact Statement” submitted to the court in December 2021, the facility said it had been forced to deal with multiple security threats “due to the attention brought to us by these three DxE members’ actions,” saying they’ve made “untrue, damaging statements [about Ridglan] to raise money for their campaign.” The statement urged that the defendants “pay for their crime, preferably jail time,” adding “No amount of money can resolve the stress, unease and worry caused by these individuals for our employees and our customers.”
Ridglan Farms is located about 30 miles from Madison in the town of Blue Mounds. It is situated on a remote country road, with no identifying signage, shrouded by trees and enclosed in a chain-link fence with barbed-wire strung across the top. The sound of dogs barking — insistent, incessant — can be heard from the road.
In business since 1966, Ridglan Farms provides “purpose bred” beagles for researchers across the country, including UW-Madison. (Beagles are researchers’ dogs of choice, due to their docile and trusting nature.) The farm, according to its website, has “a full-time staff veterinarian/facility manager who oversees animal health and well being” and manages the facility’s 25 employees.
Direct Action Everywhere
Ridglan Farms, with more than 3,000 beagles, is one of the nation’s largest dog-breeding facilities.
In a 2015 cover story for Isthmus, writer Noah Phillips interviewed company co-owner and president Jim Burns, who acknowledged that “what we do isn’t accepted by the general public as a positive thing.” But, he said, the beagles at the facility are well cared for and that “When they do leave this earth, they’re euthanized in a very humane way.” Neither Phillips nor a Wisconsin State Journal reporter who wrote about Ridglan Farms in 2018 were allowed to tour the facility.
According to an inspection report from the U.S. Department of Agriculture dated Dec. 5, 2023, Ridglan Farms’ breeding operation had 3,110 dogs—1,608 adults and 1,502 puppies. Meanwhile, an annual report for fiscal year 2022 said the facility had 759 dogs being used for research, almost all for experiments that involve “no pain, distress, or use of pain-relieving drugs.”
That’s not necessarily true of the experiments conducted on dogs purchased by researchers from Ridglan Farms. In the 1970s, 54 beagles from the breeding facility were made to ingest different brands of laundry detergent for a study called “Effects of the Ingestion of Various Commercial Detergent Products by Beagle Dogs and Pigs.” According to the study abstract, “One dog died after ingesting Sears detergent and severe damage of the upper alimentary tract was found at the higher doses.”
In 2015, 36 dogs from Ridglan (half male, half female, all five to six months old) were given large amounts of a new artificial sweetener to gauge the effects. The study says “one high dose female [was] euthanized in extremis on study day 17.” The “surviving dogs” were euthanized at the study’s end, after “13 weeks of dosing.”
In a 2016 study, a 9-year-old “retired female breeder beagle” from Ridglan Farms was used to “model” a rotator cuff injury over a period of 10 weeks. In another study that same year, 44 beagles from Ridglan, all approximately six to seven months old, were infected with heartworm larvae to test commercial remedies. In a 2019 study, 10 beagles from Ridglan were induced to have an hour-long stroke, which led to “high mortality.” In all of these studies, the dogs were ultimately euthanized, as is common in animal research.
The inspection report from December found that “Some of the weaned puppies and preweaning-aged puppies in 11 enclosures were observed to have feet or legs pass through the smooth-coated mesh floors when they walked.” It said that when this problem was pointed out, it was promptly corrected. The lack of proper flooring for puppies was also flagged in a 2016 inspection by the state Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection.
Says Carraway, “It is concerning that some years later, we’re seeing the same problem.” The inspection report also noted that “a number of adult dogs in the facility were displaying prominent stereotypical behaviors” that included “circling, pacing, and wall bouncing.” It recommended modifications including “keeping adult dogs in pairs and providing additional forms of effective inanimate enrichment” — that is, “play objects.”
Direct Action Everywhere
A video taken by activists shows rows of beagles confined to small, stacked metal cages.
The “rescue” at Ridglan farms took place in the early morning hours of April 17, 2017. According to the Animal Activist Legal Defense Project, “DxE documented dogs crammed into small cages, often alone, with no access to the outdoors; apparent continuous 24-hour lighting; noxious air and feces building up beneath the cages; dogs with red and swollen feet from standing on wire cage floors; and extreme psychological torment. The activists describe the conditions as a ‘factory farm for dogs.’”
A video posted to YouTube includes footage purportedly taken during this action. It shows row upon row of double-stacked wire cages, each with one or two beagles inside. One dog is shown frantically spinning in circles. DxE says this dog, a blind female later named Julie, is one of the three that were taken. Julie and the two other rescued dogs, females named Anna and Lucy, were filmed shortly after the action romping with each other on grass, something unknown to them at Ridglan Farms. Carraway says Julie, who he’s met, still sometimes spins in circles and is “kind of afraid of big sounds.”
Rebekah Robinson first learned about Ridglan Farms from a May 2018 article in The Intercept by famed journalist Glenn Greenwald that ran under the headline “Born to Suffer.” It described the conditions that the (not named) DxE activists said they encountered at the facility. Editorialized Greenwald, “The rescue of these dogs saved them from a short but hideously painful life as lab objects.”
Robinson, who at the time had the last name Klemm, was “appalled” to learn that such a facility operated so near to where she lived in Madison, and assumed others would be, too. She worked with an attorney to draft a ballot initiative to ban dog- or cat-breeding facilities in Mount Horeb, where she mistakenly thought Ridglan Farms is located. The effort, which came to be known as Dane4Dogs, continued even after it was determined that Ridglan is actually in the town of Blue Mounds and thus would not be affected by the measure.
The November 2018 ballot initiative failed, garnering slightly more than 40% of the vote. Robinson attributes this result to the resources that “the animal experimentation industry” was able to bring to bear against it (“They flew in experts from Washington, D.C., to provide informational sessions and they spent a lot of money”), coupled with the fact that the owners of Ridglan are well-known local residents who “convinced people in the community that, because they are good people, therefore they wouldn’t be harming dogs.”
Since then, a number of Wisconsin communities have passed bans on dog and cat research and breeding facilities, including Stoughton and Sun Prairie in Dane County, although no actual research facilities have been shut down as a result.
In Spring Green, a local governing board, in response to public sentiment, rejected a proposed new facility in the shared area between the village and town of Spring Green but was ultimately forced to allow it when the business owners sued. Village residents passed a ballot initiative against such facilities in April 2020, but Robinson says state law limits on ballot initiatives prevented residents from stopping facilities in the shared area.
Almira Tanner, the lead organizer for DxE, calls the group “a network of ordinary people committed to changing the world for animals.” She says in a video that, on issues ranging from women’s suffrage to civil rights to gay marriage, “major change happens when a tiny fraction of the population takes sustained, nonviolent, direct action.” While it may take decades, Tanner says, “animal liberation is going to happen within our lifetimes.”
In 2022, Envigo of Virginia, which had roughly the same number of dogs as Ridglan, was forced to close after being flagged for scores of violations of the Animal Welfare Act. Some 4,000 beagles were adopted out. Says Robinson, “There is precedence for shutting down these facilities, and I’m hopeful Wisconsin will act, too.”
Besides Ridglan, dogs are also used in experiments at UW-Madison and LabCorp (formerly Covance). Dane4Dogs, in a new report, notes that more dogs are annually used for research in Dane County than are adopted out by the Dane County Humane Society.
Robinson, who now lives in Oakland, California, is returning to Madison this month to attend the trial, as well as a two-day event backed by a coalition of 17 animal-welfare organizations, including PETA, Dane4Dogs, and the local Alliance for Animals. This includes a Dog Defenders March on Saturday, March 23, starting at 2 p.m. at Gates of Heaven in James Madison Park. Informational sessions and visits to local dog parks are scheduled for the following day. Dogs are welcome for most events although, the organizers advise, “the march will be loud and crowded, and some dogs may not enjoy that atmosphere.”
Says Robinson of the trial and event, “I think it’s an opportunity to shine a light on what is happening at Ridglan Farms but more broadly to shine a light on the fact that dog experimentation is still legal, which most people don’t realize. I think America, in general, is a dog-loving nation. And I believe that when we raise awareness of the issue, action will follow.”
Carraway agrees, saying that bringing awareness to places like Ridglan Farms forces people to confront what is happening to animals in their communities. “Sometimes that confrontation may feel a little unsettling because no one wants to see animals suffer, and it’s easy to sort of push it aside,” he says. “But I think when we confront it, it really shows us the best part of ourselves, which is a tendency to want to stop and alleviate suffering wherever we see it.”
[Editor's note: This story has been corrected to note that Hsiung was sentenced in the California case in November, not October, and that the penalties he received were concurrent, not consecutive.]
