Dallas vegan community breaks bread with animal rights activist Nathan Runkle

by Teresa Gubbins

A couple dozen dedicated Dallas vegans met on Monday to welcome Nathan Runkle, founder of Mercy For Animals, a Chicago-based non-profit animal rights organization focused on promoting a vegetarian diet.

The group, which included local bloggers and activists, congregated at Spiral Diner in Oak Cliff, where they ate a meatless, egg-free, sans-cheese dinner and watched a screening of Fowl Play, a short documentary film about factory-farmed laying hens.

Runkle, 24, has been in the news since the late-August release of a video showing cruel treatment of chicks at the Hy-Line North America hatchery in Spencer, Iowa, including one gruesome scene in which unwanted un-egg-laying male chicks get ground up alive.

This isn't the first time an animal rights group has published a stomach-churning video of an animal-processing facility, but this one gained a wider audience after it was picked up by the Associated Press. The AP story appeared in numerous mainstream newspapers, including the New York Times. Hy-Line has since acknowledged that the practices depicted in the video violate the company's animal welfare policy.

For Runkle, the Dallas visit was an opportunity to share his views on what's wrong with factory farming; for the Dallas community, his visit helped to further cement their sense of purpose.

"We participated in the Pride Parade on Sunday and had a turnout of about 60 people," said Eddie Garza, of Dallas Vegan, a Pegasus News content partner. "That was a lot more than we expected. It feels like things are happening and changing."

The rising tide is being felt by Colleen O'Hare and Jeana Johnson, co-owners of the new Good 2 Go taqueria inside The Green Spot.

"At least one quarter of our customers are vegetarian, and it's edging into half," said O'Hare. "It's huge."

Runkle was a powerful public speaker with a strong sense of conviction. Having grown up on a farm, he developed compassion not just for pets but also for farm animals, which he said were the most abused and exploited.

"If the demand for meat, dairy, and eggs involves animal abuse, we have to decide where we stand, and whether we want to support compassion or cruelty," he said. "Most people are compassionate and do care about treatment of animals, so we aim to get people to make choices with their diet."

He echoed the theme of Food, Inc., the recent documentary that tried unsuccessfully to get corporations such as ADM to open their doors.

"Consumers have a right to know where their food is coming from," he said.

At Spiral Diner, the food came from fruits and vegetables, deftly prepared by owner Sara Tomerlin and Spiral Diner founders Amy McNutt and James Johnston: seitan in barbecue sauce, potato salad, an extra-lemony cole slaw, pasta salad, lemon cupcakes, and thick chocolate-chip cookies.

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