I cant read the article, but from the headline it seems insane.

I'm all for the proper treatment of animals. I live on a ranch with a herd of horses.

That said, if my neighbor was mistreating their animals I would call some authority like the sherriff or the USDA to deal with it.

I have neighbors who would shoot you where you stood if they caught someone rustling their cattle without a second thought or a challenge of why. You would be too dead to explain that your intentions were noble. The law would scold them then give them a nod and a wink and a pat on the back to boot.

Do not try to rescue animals from a farm or ranch or even your urban neighbor's back yard. You are basically asking to be shot.

I have to admit, those are some very speculative claims to publish in the NYT, not to mention the fact a lot of big farm states also have castle doctrine laws. While I'm sure they won't shoot you (I haven't heard of that ever happening before), I wouldn't want to tempt them either

I think these people go about activism the wrong and counter-productive way. I think it would make more sense to take that hidden video footage they obtained and then get a large group of people to file class action lawsuits and find other methods of putting pressure on their business, their insurance, their investors, etc... Maybe even take it a step further and have private investigators and investigative journalists if they still exist to look into how certain governmental authorities conveniently look the other way and get them kicked out of office after gathering evidence of bribes and kick-backs. i.e. find the root cause of the systemic problem rather than playing whack-a-chicken-farm

Get John Oliver to do a segment on it to be more wide-reaching.

Archive Link [1]

[1] - https://archive.ph/6bptx

Define "cruelty".

If this is accepted, the problem is going to come when SPCA or someone decides to push a much broader definition of "cruelty" than everyone else had in mind when they accepted this as being a reasonable idea. From that will come anything from lawsuits to gunfire.