Mr. Conklin,
Our daughter came to us last night urging us to watch the video of the abuse at your plant. She was overcome with grief that human beings could inflict such cruelty and unconscious hatred at the most benign of creatures and their infants. The shocking images were too much for her father and me but we watched enough to know where it led.
There are moments in all our lives where we face our deepest, darkest truths.
This is your moment.
What will you do?
Can you look in the mirror and see what you have done? Have you shown this to your children and family? You are a third generation farmer. Did you learn this from your ancestors?
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?
We know this media attention is difficult to navigate, there are many people in communications to help you but handle it you will.
Can you hold an open news conference and truly accept the responsibility, really accept it and be willing to implement change?
Can you attend education classes where you are taught kindness and compassion for all beings?
Can you then spend your lives teaching that same compassion to children throughout Ohio about the possibility to change the very nature of your beings through this exposure in the media?
We challenge you to have the courage, as the brave person who filmed this did, to open your doors and your hearts. Become the standard for safety and kindness and actually change -- change your mental state and spend the rest of your lives, and the lives of your descendants, trying to make your farm the leader in humane, clean, loving treatment of the very animals you profit from. You have the opportunity. Certainly one more than those helpless victims of your sick, tortured abuse.
This is your moment. From the ashes of your lives can you re-build yourselves?
We know it is possible, if you have the willingness. But do you?
We are all waiting for your outrage and the outrage of your children and families and friends.
We are all waiting for your next move because we certainly know what ours is....
It's all here in this petition, which we encourage everyone to sign.
