For Immediate Release:
April 7, 2025

Contact:
Sara Groves 202-483-7382

Miami – Yesterday evening, at PETA’s “High Tea and Highballs” 45th-anniversary celebration at The Cocoplum on Sunset Drive, poultry industry whistleblower and “champion for chickens,” Jeremy Schmidt of Iowa, was presented with the 2025 Nanci Alexander Activist Award—one of PETA’s highest honors—by Alexander herself, a Fort Lauderdale powerhouse who founded the Animal Rights Foundation of Florida in 1989 when animal liberation was still a new idea to many. Photos from the event are available here.

Schmidt was recognized for risking his career to report Pure Prairie Poultry’s cruelty when it left its contract farms without feed for millions of chickens and for its decision to leave thousands of chickens on trucks for as long as five days with no food or water outside its now-shuttered slaughterhouse in Charles City, Iowa. The information Schmidt provided to authorities and the press helped prompt Iowa and Minnesota officials to feed millions of the starving birds and sparked an ongoing federal investigation.

“Jeremy Schmidt’s determination to sound the alarm that chickens had been abandoned to die slowly and badly has earned him one of PETA’s most distinguished awards, one reserved for heroes who help alleviate suffering, and to recognize that every animal is someone, not something,” says PETA Vice President Daniel Paden. “PETA urges everyone to follow in Jeremy’s and Nanci’s footsteps by never standing...

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