Editor:
When a teenager moved by compassion risks his future to expose unspeakable cruelty, supporters of that cruelty like Grange Master Laddie F. Marous Jr. would be best advised to just lie low until the whole thing blows over.
Instead, when Columbus television station WBNS broadcast the shocking video of Ohio egg farms shot by 17-year-old Nathan Runkle and his friends, Marous sent letters to the Columbus Dispatch, Farm and Dairy and who knows how many other publications, decrying the “hero antics” of this youngster that revealed the utter depravity of his constituency, i.e., Ohio’s factory farms.
It would better serve your constituents to keep your pen still, Mr. Marous, instead of again reminding the public that farm animals no longer live the brief, but pleasant and natural lives they once did, and instead, endure suffering essentially from birth until their too-often botched and brutal deaths.
Even old hog-killer Robert Byrd has been moved to speak out on the Senate floor against the methods used by agricultural operations such as those you defend, in which all pretense of human decency has been sacrificed for the dollar.
It doesn’t matter how long ago your organization was founded or how many members it has, Mr. Marous.
That doesn’t exempt you from God’s law (which our faith tells us requires us to be merciful), even if your lobbyists have wangled for you the temporary shelter of man’s law, which you now invoke for protection against kids like Nathan.
You may call what Nathan did “agroterrorism” (sic), but even readers of Farm and Dairy will recognize it as an act of courage.
Perhaps they will also be reminded of a certain passage from a book still important to their lives: “And a little child shall lead them.”
L.C. Sonn
Columbus, Ohio
