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FeedThe man behind the gruesome cow-abuse video
A scene from a video by Mercy For Animals of a worker stomping a calf at Conklin Dairy Farms.
Though you probably aren’t familiar with Nathan Runkle, you may know his work. Since the animal rights activist first burst on the scene while living in Columbus about eight years ago, his organization, Mercy For Animals, has emerged as a powerful, muckraking force. Just ask Billy Joe Gregg Jr., the most notorious farm worker in the United States thanks to Runkle’s group.
In May, Gregg, an employee at Conklin Dairy Farms near Plain City, was charged with 12 counts of cruelty to animals. The charges stem from a video, released by Mercy For Animals, after a four-week undercover investigation of the farm. The video shows, among other things, newborn calves being punched and stomped, cows being poked with pitchforks in the face and a cow, with its nose wired to a bar, being beaten with a metal rod while bleeding. Everyone from the Ohio Livestock Coalition to actor Alec Baldwin has condemned the abuse shown on the video, which became an Internet sensation and fodder for TV newscasts across the country. “The Conklin investigation certainly struck a deep nerve,” says Runkle, 26.
Indeed, that’s Runkle’s specialty. Most Americans are blissfully unaware of where their food comes from. But it’s hard to look at a plate of scrambled eggs quite the same way after you’ve seen a video of workers at an Iowa hatchery throwing live male chicks into a grinding machine, a common practice exposed by Runkle’s organization in an undercover probe last year.
With that and other viral videos in recent years, Mercy For Animals aims to repeat the epiphany Runkle experienced at 11. Growing up on a crop farm in Champaign County, Runkle ran across a brochure about factory farms during an Earth Day event in Dayton and was so horrified he instantly converted to vegetarianism. Four years later (while still in high school), Runkle founded Mercy For Animals, which at first focused on animal welfare issues in the Urbana area.
After graduating from high school, Runkle chose to forgo college and devote himself full time to Mercy For Animals. He moved to Columbus and worked at expanding his organization statewide. Around that time, he also conducted his first investigations at Buckeye Egg Farm in Wyandot County and Daylay Egg Farm in Union County. He and other activists walked through unlocked doors, recorded with video cameras what they found and then released the footage on the Internet and to the media. “I knew that Mercy For Animals and animal rights was my passion, and there’s no animal rights activism college degree,” Runkle says.
About two and a half years ago, Runkle moved to Chicago after Mercy For Animals absorbed another animal rights organization that was doing similar work. Since then, Runkle’s group has expanded to include 40,000 members, opened chapters in North Carolina, Texas and New York, conducted advertising campaigns promoting a vegan lifestyle in such places as Las Vegas, Minneapolis and Toronto and launched undercover probes of factory farms and slaughterhouses from Maine to California. “I still view MFA as being very much in its infancy with a lot bigger and better things to come in the future,” Runkle says.
