A legal dispute has been initiated in California in connection with a goat named Cedar, who, before being sent to slaughter, a mother had given to her 9-year-old daughter to play with for three months. As the daughter did not want Cedar to be killed, the mother took Cedar back, and how the authorities recovered the goat from her led to the legal action.
The girl’s mother, Jessica Long, had decided that her daughter could play with a goat for a few months before being killed, so she bought the goat for her, and after a few months entered Cedar into the 4-H program with the Shasta District Fair, to auction the goat for slaughter. However, the girl had bonded with Cedar, so she did not want her to be slaughtered so soon. In consequence, it has been reported that Long went to the barn where all the animals waiting to be killed were and took Cedar back.
Officials of the fair called the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office as they had already sold the goat, and the authorities got the goat back by force. Cedar was then killed as initially intended. According to Los Angeles Times, Long has since filed a federal lawsuit against Shasta District Fair officials and the county, arguing they committed an “egregious waste of police resources” and violated her and her daughter’s 4th Amendment and 14th Amendment rights protecting them from unreasonable searches and seizures, and due process.
It is not clear if this incident has made the Long family stop eating meat, or on the contrary, they carried out eating other animals like Cedar, even perhaps a lamb for Easter who had spent a few months playing with someone else’s son or daughter before being auctioned to be killed as Cedar was. Had the family been vegan this incident would not have happened, as they would not have treated a goat as a present, a toy, or a source of food, so they would not have bought the goat and sold her to be killed and eaten in the first place.
