Animal-rights groups plan late-February Trader Joe's demonstrations over supplier ties

Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) and allied animal-rights networks planned coordinated demonstrations at selected Trader Joe’s stores in late February, a trade publication reported Feb. 26, 2026; that report referenced a specific Saturday action but the excerpt did not include the full calendar date. The announcement follows a series of local protests that have targeted Trader Joe’s supplier relationships, escalating a campaign activists say is national in scope.

The campaign previously staged a protest on Saturday, Oct. 25, 2025, outside the Trader Joe’s at 2462 Honolulu Ave. in Montrose. Activists gathered outside the store, chanted and beat drums, and held signs while respecting Trader Joe’s requirement that protesters maintain a certain distance from the storefront. Some signs depicted Trader Joe’s CEO Bryan Palbaum with the message “I sell animal cruelty.”

At the Montrose action, protesters called on Trader Joe’s to cut ties with Perdue Farms’ California subsidiary, Petaluma Poultry. Activists in the crowd and in subsequent statements said DxE has “documented evidence” of sick and injured birds left without access to food or water at Petaluma Poultry and of birds “effectively being boiled alive during slaughter.” Those allegations were presented by DxE members and reported in local coverage of the Oct. 25 protest.

Crescenta Valley Weekly’s reporting on the Montrose protest said some activists displayed photographs taken by DxE members who, the newspaper reported, broke into Petaluma Poultry to investigate and to rescue birds described by activists as “living in their own filth.” Those images and accounts were used at the Montrose demonstration to bolster calls for Trader Joe’s to sever supplier ties.

One activist featured in the local coverage, Alyson Burton, is described as having joined DxE six years earlier after an action in front of Trader Joe’s headquarters in which she offered to adopt a chicken rescued from a slaughter truck. Burton named the bird Hope after helping it recover from “severe illness, obesity and necrotic wounds sustained at the slaughterhouse.” At the Montrose protest Burton told reporters, “We’re here for the chickens. They need to be spoken up for. They’re just as sweet as your cat and dog.”

DxE has argued that the conditions its members allege at Petaluma Poultry violate California Penal Code section 597, which prohibits inflicting unnecessary suffering on animals. The materials supplied to this reporter do not include statements from Trader Joe’s, Perdue Farms, Petaluma Poultry, or law-enforcement or regulatory authorities about the allegations or about the planned late-February demonstrations. If the late-February actions proceed as described in the trade report, they would extend a national DxE campaign that has brought the group to Trader Joe’s stores across the country.