Mercy for Animals
Mercy for Animals (MFA) is an international 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded in 1999 by Milo Runkle to prevent cruelty to farmed animals and promote compassionate food choices through advocacy, investigations, and policy campaigns.[1][2]
Headquartered in Los Angeles, California, MFA targets industrial animal agriculture, which it identifies as a primary source of animal suffering due to practices like confinement in battery cages and gestation crates.[1][3] The group conducts undercover investigations using hidden cameras to document alleged abuses at factory farms and slaughterhouses, releasing footage that has prompted public outrage, worker prosecutions in some cases, and corporate commitments to welfare improvements.[3][4]
MFA's corporate campaigns have secured policy changes from major food companies, including pledges to phase out battery cages for hens and gestation crates for sows, affecting supply chains for billions of animals annually, though critics argue these reforms do not address underlying issues of scale or ultimate abolition goals.[5][6] Such efforts have earned MFA high evaluations from charity assessors for cost-effective impact on animal welfare.[7] However, its methods, including deceptive employment to gain access, have faced legal challenges and condemnation from agricultural interests as trespassory and disruptive to operations.[8][4] Internally, the organization has dealt with allegations of executive misconduct, including harassment claims leading to staff departures.[4]
History
Founding and Early Activities (1999–2007)
Mercy for Animals was established in 1999 by Milo Runkle, a 15-year-old high school student from rural Ohio, following his exposure to the slaughter of a piglet in a school agricultural class, an event that prompted him to form a local group advocating for animal protection.[9] [10] The organization's initial focus centered on farmed animals, emphasizing the prevention of cruelty through awareness campaigns and promotion of plant-based alternatives to animal products.[9] Operating from modest beginnings without significant funding or staff, it relied on volunteer efforts and Runkle's leadership to build grassroots support in the Midwest.[11] In its first years, Mercy for Animals prioritized undercover investigations to expose conditions in intensive farming operations, beginning in 2001 with probes into large-scale egg facilities in Ohio, where investigators documented overcrowding, disease, and routine mistreatment while facilitating the rescue of some birds.[12] Subsequent efforts from 2000 to 2003 targeted additional egg farms in states including Maryland and Minnesota, as well as rodeos, yielding footage disseminated to media outlets and policymakers to highlight welfare violations.[13] [14] These operations, often conducted in collaboration with other animal rights entities, aimed to generate public outrage but yielded limited immediate policy changes, reflecting the nascent scale of the group.[11] By the mid-2000s, activities expanded beyond investigations to include educational outreach, with hundreds of events held by 2006 to promote veganism and animal welfare.[15] Key initiatives encompassed the launch of ChooseVeg.com as an online resource for plant-based eating guidance and the placement of pro-vegan advertisements on MTV to reach younger audiences.[15] In 2007, the organization reviewed its progress in an annual summary, noting incremental gains in awareness but continued emphasis on domestic factory farm exposés amid growing operational challenges.[16] Throughout this period, Mercy for Animals maintained a small footprint, functioning primarily as a regional advocate without international reach or major corporate engagements.[17]Growth Through Investigations and Domestic Campaigns (2008–2013)
During 2008–2013, Mercy for Animals intensified its undercover investigations into domestic factory farming operations, releasing footage that exposed widespread animal mistreatment and spurred legislative and corporate responses, thereby enhancing the organization's visibility and influence. In May 2008, MFA investigators documented conditions at a large California egg farm in Merced County, revealing hens crammed into battery cages surrounded by decaying corpses and excrement, which fueled grassroots support for Proposition 2. This statewide ballot measure, aimed at prohibiting extreme confinement of egg-laying hens, pregnant pigs, and veal calves, passed on November 4, 2008, with 63.3% voter approval and set compliance requirements effective January 1, 2015.[18][19] MFA continued with probes into dairy and egg facilities, such as the 2010 investigation at Conklin Dairy Farms in Plain City, Ohio, where workers were recorded kicking cows in the udders, stabbing them with pitchforks, and dragging injured calves by their legs, prompting a state probe but no criminal charges against the owner. That June, following MFA's exposure of abuse at Quality Egg of New England in Turner, Maine—including birds left to die in cages—the operator admitted to 10 counts of animal cruelty via civil settlement and agreed to enhanced welfare measures. These revelations drew national media scrutiny to routine industry practices, amplifying MFA's advocacy for systemic reform over isolated prosecutions.[20][21] By 2011, investigations targeted major suppliers, including Sparboe Farms' facilities in Iowa and Colorado from May to August, uncovering hens suffering spinal injuries from falls into manure pits and workers tossing birds into manure. The footage, released in December, prompted McDonald's and Target to drop Sparboe as a supplier within weeks. Paralleling this, MFA's November–December 2011 probe at a Butterball turkey slaughterhouse in North Carolina captured employees sexually abusing birds, slamming them against concrete, and jumping on their backs, leading to felony cruelty charges against three workers. A follow-up Butterball farm investigation in October 2012 further documented debeaking and overcrowding, sustaining pressure on the turkey industry.[22][23][24] These efforts, totaling over a dozen U.S.-focused exposés by 2013, correlated with MFA's operational expansion, as high-profile outcomes like arrests, supplier boycotts, and Proposition 2's enactment attracted increased donations and volunteer engagement, transitioning the group from early outreach to a prominent force in challenging industrial animal agriculture.[9]International Expansion and Corporate Pressure (2014–2019)
During 2014–2019, Mercy for Animals shifted emphasis toward high-impact corporate campaigns targeting global food companies to secure commitments for improved animal welfare standards, particularly cage-free egg production and reduced confinement practices. The organization was rated a top charity by Animal Charity Evaluators from May 2014 to November 2017 due to its cost-effective interventions in sparing animals through such advocacy.[25] In 2016, Open Philanthropy awarded funding specifically for these cage-free efforts, viewing them as an effective strategy for alleviating suffering among billions of hens by pressuring supply chain reforms.[26] These campaigns extended internationally, focusing on multinational corporations with supply chains spanning North and Latin America, Europe, and Asia, to enforce global policy consistency. MFA's work contributed to a wave of commitments from food service giants, with retrospective analyses estimating that collective corporate outreach (including MFA's contributions) yielded 9 to 120 chicken-years of life improved per dollar expended, based on reduced mortality and better conditions from policy shifts.[6] By mid-decade, the group had influenced transparency benchmarks for international firms, evaluating progress on cage-free roadmaps amid slower implementation in emerging markets.[27] Undercover investigations supported these pressures, revealing abuses in international facilities to amplify demands for accountability, though outcomes varied by jurisdiction with weaker enforcement outside North America. This phase marked MFA's growth into a more globally oriented entity, leveraging data-driven outreach over solely domestic exposés, while critiques from animal advocacy evaluators noted potential welfare trade-offs in reforms like cage-free systems that could increase other risks such as bone fractures in hens.[28]Modern Developments and Strategic Shifts (2020–present)
In the period following 2020, Mercy for Animals maintained its emphasis on undercover investigations to document conditions in factory farming facilities. A August 2023 investigation at a U.S. pig farm revealed practices including gestation crate confinement, worker-inflicted beatings, and surgical procedures without anesthesia, prompting calls for corporate and regulatory reforms.[29] In October 2024, footage from a Pork Quality Assurance Plus-certified operation exposed repeated abuses such as tail docking without pain relief and the use of electric prods on sensitive areas, highlighting persistent issues despite industry certifications.[30] These efforts aligned with broader advocacy during the COVID-19 pandemic, where the organization linked intensive animal agriculture to heightened zoonotic disease risks through surveys of public attitudes in multiple countries and support for federal legislation like the Safe Line Speeds in COVID-19 Act, which aimed to curb high-speed slaughter to protect workers and reduce contamination.[31][32] By 2020, Mercy for Animals expanded into India amid pandemic-related disruptions to animal agriculture, launching programmatic work focused on local contexts.[33] The organization's India branch developed a strategic framework prioritizing narrative shifts to reframe public views on animal exploitation and efforts to normalize plant-based eating, thereby driving down demand for factory-farmed products.[34] This reflected a growing international orientation, building on prior expansions while adapting to regional policy and cultural dynamics. A pivotal strategic evolution materialized in August 2025 with the release of a new theory of change underpinning a 10-year plan (2025–2035) to minimize farmed animal suffering on a massive scale.[35] The approach centers on chickens, which represent approximately 91% of land animals slaughtered annually for food, through targeted interventions to reshape societal attitudes toward factory farming, accelerate adoption of plant-based alternatives, and pursue systemic dismantlement of industrial animal agriculture.[36] This formalized prioritization of high-volume species and public perception campaigns marked a refinement from earlier tactics, integrating investigations with broader movement-building and evidence-based impact measurement. To operationalize global ambitions, the organization appointed a new president in September 2025 to oversee efficiency and scaling, complementing CEO Leah Garcés's longstanding focus on advocacy leadership.[37]Mission, Ideology, and Goals
Core Objectives and Philosophical Foundations
Mercy for Animals identifies industrial animal agriculture as one of the principal drivers of global suffering, with its core objective centered on preventing cruelty to farmed animals through systemic reform of food production practices. The organization seeks to eradicate the exploitation inherent in factory farming, which involves routine practices such as overcrowding, physical alterations without anesthesia, and mass slaughter, by advocating for policy changes, corporate accountability, and widespread adoption of plant-based alternatives. This mission extends to promoting "compassionate food choices," explicitly endorsing veganism as a means to spare billions of animals annually from these conditions, estimating that each individual shift to a vegan diet prevents the suffering of over 50 animals per year based on average consumption data.[1][38] Philosophically, Mercy for Animals operates from a foundation of animal sentience and moral considerability, asserting that farmed animals possess the capacity for pain, fear, and social bonds, rendering their commodification in agriculture ethically untenable. This perspective aligns with utilitarian principles of minimizing harm, prioritizing interventions that alleviate the most severe abuses—such as gestation crates for pigs or battery cages for hens—for the largest number of affected individuals, which number in the tens of billions annually worldwide. The group's ideology rejects incremental welfare measures as insufficient long-term solutions, instead envisioning a complete phase-out of animal agriculture in favor of sustainable, cruelty-free systems, predicated on the belief that human ingenuity can render such exploitation obsolete without compromising nutrition or economy.[39][38] The organization's approach is informed by a theory of change emphasizing evidence-based advocacy, where short-term wins like corporate pledges to eliminate specific cruelties build momentum toward institutional transformation, including legislative bans and market shifts to vegan products. Founded in 1999 by Nathan Runkle, whose personal encounter with animal mistreatment catalyzed a commitment to compassion over speciesism, Mercy for Animals frames its work as a moral imperative against normalized violence, drawing parallels to historical abolition of other exploitative practices. While critics from agricultural sectors dispute the feasibility and necessity of these goals, the group maintains that empirical evidence of factory farm abuses, documented through investigations, substantiates the urgency of abolitionist aims over reformist palliatives.[1][7]Positions on Farmed Animal Welfare and Veganism
Mercy for Animals maintains that industrial animal agriculture, commonly known as factory farming, inherently inflicts widespread suffering on billions of farmed animals annually through practices such as confinement in cramped spaces, mutilations without anesthesia, and forced rapid growth leading to physical deformities.[40] The organization asserts that no federal laws in the United States adequately protect animals during their lives on factory farms, enabling systemic abuses including pigs confined in gestation crates and chickens overcrowded in battery cages.[41] While Mercy for Animals pursues targeted animal welfare campaigns—such as advocating for cage-free eggs or gestation crate bans—these are framed as pragmatic steps to alleviate immediate suffering rather than endorsements of continued animal exploitation, with the group emphasizing that such reforms do not resolve the fundamental ethical issues of commodifying sentient beings.[42] The organization positions veganism as the most effective and principled response to farmed animal cruelty, arguing that adopting a plant-based diet eliminates demand for animal products and thereby prevents the conditions enabling abuse.[43] Mercy for Animals promotes vegan eating through educational resources, community meal distributions exceeding 1,300 vegan meals in initiatives like those in New Jersey in 2020, and advocacy for institutional shifts such as replacing vegetarian military rations with vegan options starting in 2027.[44] [45] Their materials describe veganism not only as a means to spare animals but also as aligned with broader goals of environmental sustainability and human health, though the primary ethical imperative remains ending animal agriculture entirely.[46] Critics within the animal advocacy community, including some abolitionist vegans, have accused Mercy for Animals of compromising by engaging in welfare-focused reforms, claiming these efforts legitimize animal use and delay full vegan transition, as articulated in a 2015 critique labeling such strategies a "betrayal of the animals."[47] Mercy for Animals counters that incremental welfare improvements coexist with uncompromising vegan advocacy, citing their undercover investigations—over 120 released since inception—as tools to expose cruelty and drive public support for plant-based alternatives.[48] The group evaluates interventions based on cost-effectiveness, prioritizing those accelerating shifts away from animal products, as assessed by independent evaluators like Animal Charity Evaluators in their 2023 review.[7]Organizational Structure and Operations
Leadership and Governance
Mercy for Animals (MfA) was founded in 1999 by Milo Runkle, who served as the organization's president and board chair for over two decades, stepping down from executive roles while remaining involved as founder.[10] Runkle, who also co-founded the Good Food Institute, focused early efforts on undercover investigations and advocacy against factory farming practices.[49] As of 2025, Leah Garcés serves as chief executive officer, having previously led Compassion in World Farming USA and emphasizing corporate engagement and policy reform to reduce animal suffering.[10] [50] In September 2025, tech executive Arash Yomtobian was appointed president, tasked with driving global expansion and innovation in ending industrial animal agriculture.[51] [52] The leadership team includes senior vice presidents for strategy, finance, and operations, such as Lucas Alvarenga (Strategy, Impact, and Research) and Shahid Maqsood (Finance).[53] The board of directors provides oversight, with Neysa Colizzi as chair, Michael Pellman Rowland as treasurer, and members including Tyson-Lord Gray and Alexis Fox, as reported in 2025 filings.[54] [55] Prior boards included Runkle as chair until his transition.[56] MfA operates as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization under U.S. law, with governance structured around standard fiduciary duties of care, loyalty, and obedience, including policies for conflict of interest management and whistleblower protections.[56] [7] Independent evaluators have confirmed compliance: Charity Navigator awarded a 4/4 star rating in accountability and finance as of recent assessments, while CharityWatch noted meeting governance and transparency benchmarks for fiscal year 2021 data extended into later reviews.[2] [57] These ratings reflect audited financials, independent board composition, and public disclosure of Form 990 filings, though animal advocacy nonprofits like MfA may prioritize mission-driven strategies over diversified revenue sources typical in other sectors.[56]Funding Sources and Financial Transparency
Mercy for Animals (MFA) derives the majority of its funding from private contributions, including individual donations and grants from philanthropic foundations. In 2023, the organization received a $12.47 million grant from Open Philanthropy to advance its global farmed animal welfare campaigns, representing one of its largest single contributions.[58] Other notable funding includes grants from donor-advised funds such as the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program ($1.43 million in 2024) and the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. MFA reports no reliance on government funding, emphasizing grassroots and high-net-worth donor support through its philanthropy programs.[59] The organization maintains a high level of financial transparency by voluntarily publishing its IRS Form 990 filings, audited financial statements, and detailed annual reports on its website, covering revenue breakdowns and expenditure allocations.[59] Independent evaluators affirm this transparency: Charity Navigator assigns a 4/4-star rating for accountability and finance, while GuideStar awards a Platinum Seal of Transparency.[2][59] CharityWatch provides a B+ rating, noting that fiscal year 2021 data showed 71% of total expenses allocated to programmatic activities, with administrative costs at 16% and fundraising at 13%.[60]| Fiscal Year | Total Contributions | Program Expenses (% of Total) | Cost to Raise $100 |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | $17 million | 71% | $13 |