Corporate Dairy Factory Farms

  • by: Miss Kitty
  • recipient: Congress. the President, FDA, EPA
I do realize this video is difficult to watch, but please do so you may understand that only those who are aware of this wholly unacceptable and brutal treatment of animals is NOT acceptable.  This is not just brutal and horrific, but completely inhumane.
Please read and sign this petition.  Thank you.

Video from Conklin shows cows stabbed with pitchforks, beaten in the face with crowbars and their tails twisted until bones break. 150 police officers had to be stationed at the dairy during the Memorial Day weekend because the public was so outraged and the Ohio Veterinary Medical Association, Union County Sheriff Rocky Nelson and Dr. Temple Grandin, associate professor of livestock behavior at Colorado State University, all condemned the acts.

But in July, Union County prosecuting attorney David Phillips said no charges would be filed against Conklin owner, Gary Conklin because "in context, Mr. Conklin's actions were entirely appropriate." Worse, Phillips accuses MFA, whose undercover investigator shot the video, of allowing "the abuse to continue unreported and the animals to suffer." Not the Conklin employee, Billy Joe Gregg, who worked right alongside the owner until the Mercy For Animal investigation!

Gregg remains incarcerated and is expected to plead guilty to misdemeanor counts of animal cruelty this month.

A Farm and Dairy editorial about the Conklin investigation in June also accuses MFA of allowing the abuse to continue, even suggesting that Gregg might be "paid" by MFA and "a supporter."

While Big Meat should make up its mind up whether animal advocates staged or allowed the cruelty -- you can't have both -- there is a larger question:

Why are volunteer humane workers doing the job of the government and Big Meat? And blamed, when they find infractions that both ignored, for not notifying authorities sooner? (See: downers at Hallmark Meat; school lunch program.)

Only four months before the Conklin video, an equally sadistic employee is shown abusing animals at Willet Dairy. He is believed to have worked there for 19 years and brags on camera about braining a bull with a two by four and then kicking its genitals, "stomping" an animal by jumping off of a gate and onto her head repeatedly and brutalizing a tied up calf so badly the manager asks why it's so bruised.

Denver cheese maker Leprino Foods Co., who distributes cheese to Pizza Hut, Dominos and Papa John's, announced it was dumping Willet, which had been its supplier, after the video.

In addition to enduring assaults, calves at Willet are allowed to freeze to death and kept in unheated, coffin-like tin sheds spaced every few feet, even in the snow, says the MFA investigator.

"I discovered a calf that appeared severely ill. I asked the worker responsible for newborns about her, and he told me that she was cold and would soon be dead," he writes in a diary he kept while working on the farm. Seven hours later, "the dying calf was still in the same place, her throat barely expanding and contracting in slow breaths. Her eyes were completely gray. I sat down beside her and stroked her hair. She did not respond, but when I got up to walk away, she let out a weak bleat, so I returned and continued to pet her."

The next day the calf had frozen to death and been "dragged into a corner," he writes. "Two other calves cuddled next to each other, shivering from the cold. A mother hovered over the pen, helplessly watching and moaning in distress."

While many ask why "farms" like Willet, Conklin and Buckeye are not shut down but allowed to continue operations with legal slaps on the wirst.

As the duly elected leaders of this country or appointed leaders of agencies of human/animal protection.  We appeal to you to be active in quickly ending the suffering of the animals of dairy farms.  We the under signed feel that is something that must be immideately addressed and with only positive results being an accpetable out come.

Thank you for time, we will be watching and awaiting your responses.

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