Opponents of factory farms and animal cruelty celebrated Saturday night when jurors acquitted two activists who were each facing up to five-and-a-half years in prison on felony burglary and theft charges stemming from the 2017 removal of a pair of sick piglets from a Smithfield Foods factory farm in Utah.
The not-guilty verdict—a landmark decision establishing the legal "right to rescue" distressed animals in need of care—is "the culmination of a more than five-year pursuit that multiple agencies, including the FBI and the Utah attorney general's office," The Intercept's Marina Bolotnikova reported.
