Excerpts from a story in The Washington Post:
Jessica Long’s 9-year-old daughter brought the family’s goat, Cedar, to the Shasta District Fair and Event Center in Anderson, Calif., 150 miles north of Sacramento, last year to sell him for slaughter. As the livestock auction was starting, she told her mom she couldn’t bear to lose him. They took Cedar home.Less than two weeks later, a detective with the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office got a search warrant, drove hundreds of miles to seize the pet goat and returned him to Shasta County fair officials to be slaughtered...In April 2022, Long bought her daughter, who was 9 at the time, a white-and-brown Boer goat. Her daughter, identified as E.L. in court documents, spent nearly three months feeding and caring for the goat, which she named Cedar. She bonded with him as if he were a puppy...On June 24, Long and her daughter, who is a member of the 4-H program, went to the Shasta District Fair’s junior livestock auction, where she exhibited Cedar for potential buyers, according to the suit. But the girl balked the following day, the final day of the auction, causing her mother to try to end their participation in the event, the suit states. Fair representatives allegedly refused to let them, saying the rules prohibited their withdrawal...Instead of handing Cedar over, Long took the goat and her daughter home. Before doing so, she told fair representatives she would pay for any financial hit caused by the decision to keep him, the suit states...On June 27, Long sent a letter to the district fair “to get them to understand, as human beings, her position,” according to her suit. In it, she told fair officials that watching her daughter sobbing had been “heartbreaking,” that the girl had suffered through the deaths of three grandparents in the previous year and that “our family has had so much heartbreak and sadness that I couldn’t bear the thought of the following weeks of sadness after the slaughter” of Cedar...Melanie Silva, CEO of the district fair, responded the next day, according to an email provided by Long’s attorneys. She wrote that, as a mother, she was “not unsympathetic regarding your daughter and her love for her animal,” but also asking her to understand that the fair is designed “to teach our youth responsibility and for the future generations of ranchers and farmers to learn the process and effort it takes to raise quality meat.”“Making an exception for you will only teach [our] youth that they do not have to abide by the rules that are set up for all participants,” Silva wrote in the June 28 email...
Later that day, Ashbee, joined by Fernandez and fellow detective Jacob Duncan, drove at least 500 miles round-trip over the course of about 10 hours “to seize a young girl’s beloved goat for slaughter,” the suit states.
That definitely will teach her a lesson. More details and nuances at the source link.
How to create a vegan in one easy step.
ReplyDeleteIt seems the 4H program is run by a bunch of assholes.
We have lost our humanity.
ReplyDeleteLink doesn't work.
ReplyDeleteAdults can be stupidly heartless.
I had pasted the title rather than the url into the link. Fixed. Thank you.
DeleteThis seems like a great waste of taxpayers' money to send the police on a 10-hour round trip to confiscate the goat. It would have been nice if someone had offered to buy the goat at the auction and return it to the girl, instead of slaughtering it.
ReplyDeleteA politician DID buy the goat and when mom called him he said the girl could keep the goat. But the officials insisted it had to be slaughtered to follow the fucking rules.
DeleteNow, now, Minnesotastan, don't let our old age and ire wind up getting us in trouble with f-bombs!
DeleteMaybe what they ought to do is include in the "contract" that, yes, you can change your mind, but it will cost amount of the highest bid...PLUS 10%. That seems to be fair enough.
ReplyDeleteOR the person with the highest bid relinquishes it. After all, that bid was not really for a goat, but for charity, etc.
It reminded me of when we would do cake auctions (for missions) at church. There were a couple of fairly well-to-do older men who loved to contribute and play the game. I remember one guy won a cake after bidding $200+, then had the ladies slice it and serve it for the after-auction fellowship.
I wish that when my bike was stolen the police had put 10 hours into recovering it.
ReplyDeleteI wish I could say I've seen great progress in the area of reducing needless animal suffering during my lifetime. Alas, no. Analysis and commentary from the animal liberation camp: https://sentientmedia.org/cedar-the-goat-shasta-county/
ReplyDeleteThis horror show happened close to where I live. People think of California as a liberal/progressive state. Well, yes and no. Especially our red counties. All else aside, this action by law enforcement strikes me as performative. That is to say, law enforcement derailed from its mission of "keeping the peace." Instead, likely taking sides in the culture war.