A California student has been sentenced to 90 days in jail after breaking into a Petaluma poultry slaughterhouse and taking four chickens in an effort she called a “rescue”.

Zoe Rosenberg, a 23-year-old student at the University of California, Berkeley, was convicted of felony conspiracy and three misdemeanor counts in October. On Wednesday, a judge sentenced her to 90 days – 60 of which may involve jail alternates, such as house arrest – far less than the four-and-a-half-year maximum sentence she could have faced. The judge also ordered Rosenberg to pay more than $100,000 to Petaluma Poultry, the Perdue Farms facility from which she took four chickens in 2023. Rosenberg has been ordered to report to the Sonoma county jail on 10 December.

“I will not apologize for taking sick, neglected animals to get medical care,” Rosenberg told reporters following her conviction.

In 2023, Rosenberg and other members of the animal welfare group Direct Action Everywhere (DxE) entered a Petaluma Poultry slaughterhouse disguised as workers in the agricultural region of Sonoma county, just north of San Francisco. Rosenberg and her fellow activists removed four chickens from the slaughterhouse – which they later named Poppy, Ivy, Aster and Azalea – and placed them in an animal sanctuary. She and the other members of DxE posted footage of the action online. “It’s not a whodunnit,” Rosenberg’s lawyer, Chris Carraway, said throughout the trial. “It’s a whydunnit.”

Rosenberg did not deny that she had taken the chickens from the Perdue slaughterhouse, but said she was rescuing the birds from a cruel situation. Activists with DxE say that “right to rescue” laws in California and 13 other states, which grant people legal protections if they enter a motor vehicle to rescue an endangered animal, should apply to all animals in distress. Since 2014, the group has coordinated 60 such operations, from Utah to Wisconsin, a DxE spokesperson told the Guardian in October.

Petaluma Poultry, the company that owns the facility that Rosenberg entered, has called DxE an extremist group intent on destroying animal agriculture.

In a statement to Berkeleyside, the Sonoma County Farm Bureau agreed. “For years, DxE has harassed farm families and workers, trespassed on private property, and stolen from local businesses,” said Dayna Ghirardelli, executive director of the bureau.

Supporters shared reactions to Rosenberg’s conviction on Wednesday, including the actor Joaquin Phoenix. “When individuals step in to save a life because the system has looked the other way, they should be supported – not prosecuted,” he said in a statement. “We have to decide who we are as a society: one that protects the vulnerable, or one that punishes those who try.”