Celebrity Jamie Lee Curtis Condemns Animal Cruelty Recorded at Conklin Dairy Farm

After being alerted to an Internet video displaying gross acts of cruetly to dairy cows and calves on the Conklin Dairy Farm near Plain City, Ohio, actress Jamie Lee Curtis and her daughter's father, Christopher Guest, signed a petition organized to call for the shutting down of the farm. Curtis and Guest also wrote an open letter to the Conklin Farms manager, Gary Conklin, asking him to publicly apologize for the situation of horrific abuse to Conklin animals shown in the video.

Curtis' and Guest's letter asks several questions of Conklin, including, "Can you face and take the anger and sadness and grief and rage that so many will be feeling for you and your staff and accept and understand the outrage?"; "Can you hold an open news conference and truly accept the responsibility, really accept it and be willing to implement change?"; and "Can you attend education classes where you are taught kindness and compassion for all beings?"

Curtis and Guest explained in the letter that their daughter was devastated by the acts of cruelty to animals displayed in the video, and she asked them to watch the video and try to do something positive about the situation.

The letter further calls for Conklin and his family to "spend the rest of your lives...trying to make your farm the leader in humane, clean, loving treatment of the very animals you profit from."

On May 26, 2010 one arrest was made at the Conklin farm. Billy Joe Gregg Jr., 25, of Delaware, Ohio and an employee of the farm, was fired after the video evidence was turned over to the Marysville prosecutor's office May 24, 2010. The video displayed animal abuse taking place on the farm from April 28 to May 23, 2010, according to an article written by Meghan Barr and printed by the AP/Huffington Post May 26, 2010.

Petitioners seeking signitures to their Conklin cause state they are "alarmed and shocked" by the "acts of extreme animal abuse, extreme animal cruelty and extreme animal torture" on the Conklin farm shown via the video.

Penned dairy cows are shown beaten with crowbars, punched and kicked in their udders, and stabbed with pitchforks, while a baby calf's body is twisted and tortured and his head is fist-punched and stomped on.

The petition asks for shutdown of the Conklin farm and arrests that will result in guilty verdicts with maximum penalties leveled. The governor of Ohio and the state's legislative bodies are targeted by the petition to take immediate action when signitures are complete.

In additiion, outraged bloggers who have viewed the video evidence say they have written letters to President Barack Obama, Vice President Joe Biden and the U.S. Congress to demand action against the Conklin family operation.

Mercy for Animals, a non-profit organization that invetigates cruetly to animals specifically on "farm factories", shot the video undercover to gather evidence of cruelty and abuse of productive farm animals. The Chicago-based organization also possess video it shot in 2009 of live male chicks being pitched into a mechanical grinder.

The meat, egg, and dairy industries are major entities targeted by Mercy for Animals as practicing animal cruelty on farm factories on a regualr basis.

Ohio petitioners against the type of animal abuse displayed in the Conklin video are also calling for better and stronger laws to control preferred animal euthanasia. Such laws presently vary from state to state.