Revealed: How Big Ag Spied on Animal Rights Activists and Lobbied the FBI to Label Them as Bioterrorists
Hundreds of emails and internal documents reviewed by WIRED paint a stark picture of a persistent and often covert campaign led by top lobbyists and representatives of America’s agricultural industry. For nearly a decade, this campaign sought to surveil, discredit, and suppress animal rights organizations. Central to this effort was the reliance on corporate spies to infiltrate activist meetings, effectively serving as informants for the FBI.
The documents, primarily obtained through public records requests by the nonprofit Property of the People, detail a secretive and long-running collaboration between the FBI’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Directorate (WMDD) and the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA). The AAA is a nonprofit trade group representing a wide array of interests across America’s food supply chain, including farmers, ranchers, and veterinarians. This partnership highlights how a powerful industry group actively worked to shape law enforcement's perception of its critics.
Since at least 2018, the AAA has been a consistent source of intelligence for federal agents regarding the activities of animal rights groups such as Direct Action Everywhere (DxE). Records of emails and meetings reveal the industry’s overarching mission: to persuade authorities that animal rights activists represent the primary “bioterrorism” threat to the United States. Corporate spies hired by the AAA infiltrated activism meetings, collecting photographs, audio recordings, and strategic information. The AAA leveraged its ties with law enforcement to protect industry players from public scrutiny, push for investigations into its most vocal critics, and reframe the actions of animal rights protesters as a singular national security threat.
Furthermore, the documents show that state authorities have used the potential presence of protesters as a justification to withhold information about disease outbreaks at factory farms from the public.
Zoe Rosenberg, a UC Berkeley student and animal cruelty investigator with DxE, expressed little surprise at the revelation of powerful private-sector groups surveilling her organization. However, she found their collaboration with law enforcement paradoxical. “If anyone should have the ear of law enforcement, it’s animal cruelty investigators exposing rampant violations of the law leading to real animals suffering and dying horrific deaths,” she told WIRED.
Profiled by WIRED in 2019, DxE is a grassroots animal rights organization known for its nonviolent direct actions. These actions often include covert operations to rescue animals and document conditions and practices at factory farms that the group deems inhumane.
Rosenberg, 22, is currently facing charges in California related to removing four chickens from a Sonoma County slaughterhouse in 2023. Beyond minor charges like trespassing, she was also charged with a felony count of conspiracy to commit those misdemeanors. The Sonoma County prosecutor justified this discretionary felony charge by portraying Rosenberg as a “biosecurity risk,” particularly in the context of avian flu concerns.
Rosenberg asserts that DxE employs biosecurity protocols that exceed industry standards. These include investigators quarantining themselves from birds for a full week before and after entering farms. “All of our investigators before entering a facility shower with hot water and soap and put on freshly washed clothes that have been washed thoroughly and dried on high heat to kill viruses and bacteria,” she explained. “Everything is sanitized and then sanitized again upon leaving the facility.”
Rosenberg does not deny removing the chickens, which she named Poppy, Aster, Ivy, and Azalea. She stated, “Generally, if we feel an animal is going to die from neglect or maltreatment if we don’t remove them from the facility, then we feel that it is justified and necessary to step in to save their life.” Her attorney, Chris Carraway, noted that DxE had attempted to report alleged health violations at the facility “to the point of futility.” Rosenberg described the reporting process as a “never-ending loop of no one agency wanting to take responsibility and enforce animal welfare laws.”
According to Rosenberg, the birds she rescued were noticeably smaller and weaker than others in their flock, exhibiting signs she believed indicated infection and dehydration, along with open wounds and other visible injuries. Under veterinary care, Poppy was diagnosed with a respiratory infection, and Aster’s feet were found to be “full of pus.” All the birds had contracted coccidiosis, a parasitic disease causing diarrhea, inflammation, and bleeding.
Tinker Tailor Corporate Spy
To gather intelligence on DxE, the Animal Agriculture Alliance has engaged in years of surveillance, as revealed by the documents. Confidential records obtained separately by WIRED detail how undercover operators working for the AAA embedded themselves within the animal rights group. These operators provided the trade organization with daily reports on protests and meetings, along with photographs, audio recordings, and other documentation.
During a November 2018 meeting, AAA board members discussed attending DxE events to develop “protective information.” They noted they were already in contact with a “security company” that had previously attended DxE’s training. At a manager’s meeting the following April, the group decided to “hire someone” to attend a DxE conference in Berkeley, California, estimating the “total price would be about $4,500.” A confidential report authored several months later by an undercover operative on assignment from the private intelligence firm Afimac Global detailed the results of this operation. Another confidential report, not attributed to a specific firm, shows the AAA again infiltrated a DxE conference in 2021, identifying members, other attendees (including Rosenberg), and describing interviews and observations of protest activities.
Afimac Global did not respond to a request for comment regarding these operations.
The AAA’s focus on the “bioterrorism” angle was evident early on. At a regulatory conference in early 2018, the organization delivered a talk titled “Bioterrorism and activist groups.” Internal AAA documents indicate that within months, the FBI contacted the AAA with a request. Meeting notes from May 2018 state, “They reached out to us a few weeks ago and asked for records of activist incidents on farms.” At the same meeting, members discussed the challenges of getting prosecutors to charge activists, with one industry representative attributing this difficulty to a lack of legal standing. This representative suggested urging law enforcement to pursue “terrorism” charges instead, a strategy reportedly considered by a national pork producer. The notes claim the AAA had already “been in contact with the FBI about this situation.”
In an email to WIRED, AAA spokesperson Emily Ellis denied a formal relationship with the FBI. She stated, “In the course of our work to support a secure food system, we have occasionally communicated with authorities to flag concerns where there is a potential risk to people, animals, or critical infrastructure.” The nonprofit declined to answer questions about hiring undercovers and did not respond when asked for specific evidence showing activists had caused disease outbreaks. “The Alliance cannot speak to how law enforcement officials choose to communicate or act on information,” Ellis wrote. “We do not direct the actions of any government agency, and we categorically reject the suggestion that the Alliance instructs or influences the FBI or any such organization.”
Pushing the Bioterrorism Narrative
Records demonstrate that in the spring of 2019, the AAA actively sought to solidify its connection with the FBI. In a May 2019 email to the bureau, the group’s then-president and CEO, Kay Johnson Smith, referenced a meeting with Stephen Goldsmith, a veterinarian at the FBI’s WMDD, at a recent conference aimed at strengthening government-agriculture ties. Smith reminded Goldsmith of her presentation on DxE, describing it as an “extremist group” that had conducted “several mass protests on farms, in retail stores and in restaurants.” Smith explicitly asked the WMDD to help the AAA share information about DxE “with law enforcement officials nationwide,” claiming the group was planning an “extremist campaign.”
Smith forwarded an alert about an upcoming DxE protest, a march from a police station to a grocery store, asking if the FBI could connect the AAA with law enforcement across the country. Goldsmith forwarded the alert internally within the FBI, and it eventually reached a counterterrorism center in Washington and a federal investigator with the US Department of Agriculture (USDA).
Roughly three months later, the WMDD issued an intelligence memo titled “Animal Rights Extremists Likely Increase the Spread of Virulent Newcastle Disease [vND] in California.” This memo cited with “high confidence” the claim that violent extremists were “likely” to “spread vND”—a highly contagious and often fatal bird disease—“in the near term” due to neglecting biosafety procedures. The FBI highlighted two instances where it claimed there was “no evidence” of activists following proper protocols.
However, analysts at the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), a multi-agency law enforcement hub, soon challenged the FBI’s claims. Less than four months later, the NCRIC concluded that “Animal rights activists are probably not responsible for any of the identified vND incidents” in the state. This assessment cited federal scientific research, according to records first obtained by the transparency group Distributed Denial of Secrets. The NCRIC further noted that despite law enforcement’s assertion that DxE “almost certainly” violated biosecurity protocols, police reports indicated activists had taken “biosecurity precautions to prevent contamination or spread of disease.” The NCRIC ultimately assessed that if activists engaged in criminal activity, it would likely be “non-violent” and “low level.”
That same fall, Goldsmith’s chemical-biological countermeasure unit within the WMDD circulated a presentation to state law enforcement officials referencing “unsubstantiated reports” that PETA, another animal rights nonprofit, had played a role in the 2015 avian flu outbreak by allegedly collecting “contaminated carcasses” to spread the virus. This was a claim Goldsmith himself had dismissed while working for the same unit four years prior; a trade publication in 2015 paraphrased him telling a crowd “there is no evidence of that actually happening.”
Goldsmith did not respond to a request for comment. The FBI declined to comment on specific groups but stated it frequently shares information with the private sector. “Our goal is to protect our communities from unlawful activity while at the same time upholding the Constitution,” the agency said via email. “The FBI focuses on individuals who commit or intend to commit violence and activity that constitutes a federal crime or poses a threat to national security. The FBI can never open an investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity.”
New Ammunition for Industry Influence
By the end of 2019, the Animal Agriculture Alliance was increasingly relying on “bioterrorism” claims to bolster its calls for law enforcement intervention. To capture the attention of local police in California and the state’s Rural Crimes Task Force, the AAA contacted Michael Payne, an outreach coordinator at the Western Institute for Food Safety and Security at UC Davis. They informed Payne that one of their members, an unidentified trucker, was growing frustrated with animal rights activists and had concerns extending to “bioterrorism.” The AAA claimed the activists were taking photos of the driver’s truck and “feeding his pigs grapes.”
Payne had previously attended an AAA presentation on “dealing with animal rights activists,” according to emails. He later invited the AAA to collaborate on dairy-farm proposals in California, alongside multiple law enforcement agencies, including the FBI.
Neither Payne nor UC Davis responded to requests for comment. The California Rural Crime Prevention Task Force also did not respond. Attempts to reach Payne by phone were unsuccessful.
Months after the FBI circulated its disputed assessment on activists spreading virulent Newcastle disease, Payne issued a memo under the rural taskforce’s letterhead encouraging his “FBI colleagues” to read an article translated and amplified by a Beijing-based podcast host. The article discussed Chinese “swine stir-fry syndicates” allegedly using drones to spread African swine flu in a scheme to manipulate pork prices.
Payne suggested weaponizing these allegations to achieve policy goals in the US, such as allowing farmers to declare livestock facilities “no fly zones.” He wrote that combining this with the FBI’s assessment that “activist trespass is a real and present biosecurity threat” provided the industry with “ammunition” to ensure sheriffs did a “proper job” responding to complaints.
Significantly, the podcast host whose blog Payne shared openly rejected the “pig-gang” allegations, highlighting the Chinese government’s ownership of the original news outlet and counter-reporting by an independent source.
Payne’s email noted he forwarded the article to numerous local sheriffs’ departments and the state’s WMDD office, which “in turn passed it on to FBI HQ ‘for their situational awareness.’”
Information gathered by the AAA on DxE’s activities was widely distributed to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies across the US, as well as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. In a February 2021 email, the AAA provided the WMDD office with information on three upcoming events planned by DxE and other activist groups, including a Zoom class and a vigil for Regan Russell, an activist killed in 2020 by a livestock transport truck outside an Ontario slaughterhouse.
Goldsmith circulated the AAA’s tips to several FBI agents and a supervising special inspector in the animal health branch of the California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA). Federal agencies and at least 27 state and local police departments received the email. At least 10 agricultural trade groups and lobbyists were copied.
Big Ag’s Back Channel and the Suppression of Information
Ryan Shapiro, executive director at Property of the People, stated that the hundreds of records his organization amassed offer an unprecedented view into how Big Ag lobbyists allegedly sought to conceal incidents of animal cruelty and disease while specifically targeting law enforcement agencies for influence. “This is a shameless assault on civil liberties, human health, and basic decency,” he said.
“There’s an inherent relationship between cruelty and disease on factory farms,” said Shapiro, whose MIT doctoral dissertation explored the intersection of national security and animal controversies. “When you have that many animals packed in so tightly they can’t stand up, can’t turn around, can’t spread their limbs, and are pressed up against each other in their own filth, in their own sickness, of course disease is going to be rampant.”
The industry’s concern over DxE’s activism intensified with the launch of Project Counterglow in April 2021. This online interactive map compiled data on over 27,500 farms and animal-ag facilities using public records, activist reporting, and artificial intelligence scanning satellite imagery to identify previously unknown locations.
Citing Project Counterglow the following month, the Food Protection and Defense Institute, a university-based consortium working with the Department of Homeland Security, noted in a memo that the FBI and AAA had jointly “profiled the current risk environment” at an industry-government event days after the map’s launch. According to the memo, the FBI was providing the AAA with a list of WMDD coordinators for members to share information about activists.
The FBI eventually provided the AAA with a dedicated email inbox for reporting on DxE and other animal rights groups. A 2023 email from the AAA reminded members to report “animal rights activity” directly to the FBI using the group’s own “Activist Activity Notification Form” and the email address NF_ARVE_INTAKE@fbi.gov.
The Food Protection and Defense Institute did not respond to a request for comment.
Preventing animal rights activists from discovering outbreaks has, at times, seemingly taken precedence over informing the public. Emails from 2023 show USDA and California Department of Food and Agriculture officials discussing delaying news about a highly pathogenic avian flu detected at two Sonoma County farms. A state official had previously warned that “protesters” were likely to be in the area. A USDA official suggested not entering the information into the state’s emergency management response system, delaying the alert for at least three days. “Much longer than that and it raises too many questions,” the official noted.
At least a quarter of a million birds were culled around the time of these emails. A year later, the CDFA released a report that pointed towards the protesters, alleging it was “plausible” they may have spread the virus.
Steve Lyle, a CDFA spokesperson, stated that the possibility of people visiting a farm without proper biosecurity training raises concerns about virus spread. “In any animal disease incident, more movement of people and equipment brings a greater risk of spread,” he said.
A “crisis response plan” developed by Washington State livestock and agricultural groups, obtained through public records, notes that the federal government’s policy is “to assume that any animal disease outbreak or large-scale food contamination incident is an intentional act until proven otherwise.”
When rumors circulated within the Washington State Department of Agriculture (WSDA) and other agencies about cattle being poisoned or intentionally infected, the claims were dismissed by the head of a field dairy investigative unit from Washington State University. His team had discovered a “serious outbreak” among several herds of yearling cattle.
The investigator noted that while a cattle owner was convinced the outbreak was “sabotage from animal rights activists,” other probable sources were clearly present. He stated his team had “spent a lot of time trying to convince [the ranchers] that the disease outbreak most likely had nothing to do with bioterrorism, and is most likely due to husbandry and management issues which we laid out very clearly for them.” However, he observed that ranchers seemed to “prefer to follow conspiracy.” After reading this, a WSDA official instructed others in the email chain to “keep this information private and not forward [it] on.”
When a reporter in 2021 inquired why the WSDA kept no tally of livestock in the state, officials noted internally that while there was no directive to do so, “privacy is very important to producers, especially with ongoing threats associated with agro-terrorism and activist groups.”
Meanwhile, the AAA has actively worked for years to keep its communications with the government confidential from the public. In 2018, it moved documents subject to public records requests behind a “password protected link.” That same year, it joined a coalition of food industry groups in filing an amicus brief with the US Supreme Court aimed at limiting public access to corporate records under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The group expressed optimism that the court’s conservative majority would support its position, noting in a meeting agenda that “Animal activist groups routinely use FOIA to obtain confidential information submitted to the government.”
The case, ultimately decided in the food industry’s favor, redefined the meaning of “confidential” under FOIA to include information that the industry itself deemed private.
In October 2024, Stephen Goldsmith of the FBI attempted to intervene against a state-level records request filed by Property of the People. He incorrectly informed the Washington State Department of Agriculture that the requester, Ryan Shapiro, was a member of a known criminal group.
Records later obtained by Shapiro under the state’s public records act show Goldsmith telling the WSDA that the “timing” of Shapiro’s request was suspicious, coinciding with a recent bird flu outbreak. He claimed the outbreak occurred in an “unusual location in the building” and did not match the virus’s “expected epidemiological pattern.” While mentioning a simultaneous outbreak at another farm owned by the same company, Goldsmith also cited the AAA in his email as an organization monitoring “animal rights violent extremists.”
“Transparency is not terrorism,” Shapiro stated, “and the FBI should not be taking marching orders from industry flacks.”
WSDA officials corrected Goldsmith’s allegation about Shapiro not being a member of a criminal group. They also advised the FBI not to name the infected farm, providing Goldsmith and other FBI officials with a code word in case their communications were discovered through a public records request. A WSDA spokesperson told WIRED that this is customary when a farm is under quarantine “to protect the identity of the operation, consistent with confidentiality provisions.” The WSDA later informed the FBI that the two cases Goldsmith thought might be connected were “completely unrelated,” emphasizing that the disease strains at the two locations were “genetically different” and “did not raise concerns.”
Updated at 2:30 pm ET, June 3, 2025: Added details about the original source of the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center records described in this article.