The Shasta District Fair last year ended disastrously for a 9-year old girl and her goat. And it didn’t end so well for the Shasta County, California, fair officials who sent law enforcement hunting with a search warrant for the animal after the girl decided she didn’t want it killed. The goat got slaughtered. But the fair officials got pretty beat up on social media.
Jessica Long’s daughter — identified in a pending lawsuit only as E.L. — raised the big-eyed, floppy-eared Cedar as part of a 4-H youth project. She entered him in the Shasta District Fair junior livestock auction, which happens to be something called a terminal auction. The animals that are bought are killed and their meat is turned over to the winning bidders. Just before the auction, the young girl told her mother that she couldn’t go through with sending Cedar to slaughter and wanted out. Fair officials refused, according to the lawsuit. After the auction, with her daughter sobbing in Cedar’s pen, Long took Cedar and, as she later wrote to fair officials, decided to suffer the consequences later. Mother, daughter and goat left the fair and went to a farm more than 200 miles away in Sonoma County.
Long offered to let the fair keep the entire $902 that was bid for the goat and pay any other costs. But fair officials told her to bring the goat back or law enforcement would be involved. Sure enough, on July 8, two sheriff’s deputies drove nearly 500 miles to find and take the goat back, according to the lawsuit.
