A girl wanted to keep the goat she raised for a county fair. They killed it
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
A number of years ago there was a dog being given up that my wife and I wanted to adopt off Craigslist. It was being given up by a family who - you guessed it - “didn’t have time for her”. This was in Weatherford TX which was over an hour from our place in Dallas. We got halfway there before the woman who placed the ad called us asking us to turn around, because her 8 year old daughter was having a breakdown after the realization that their dog was about to be rehomed.
Six months later they emailed us asking if we were still willing to take the dog, otherwise it was going to the shelter. At that point we had already taken on another. I hope it didn’t wind up in a kill shelter all because these parents couldn’t help their child deal with reality. This story reminded me of that.
We can hunch over a little more, strive to blend in, build taller fences, be more cynical, make a million plans and expect the worst, or we can advocate for change and try to be more patient, kind and accepting, and, I think, I would like to advocate the latter.
4-H auctions finance the programme. If the auctions become unreliable because parents couldn’t bother to identify an attachment early and message their intent to renegotiate a contract until right before the auction, the programme is threatened. It’s also baffling the parents didn’t try to buy the goat off the purchaser, its lawful owner, instead of asking the venue to void a contract. (EDIT: It appears they did and the buyer said they were fine reversing the contract. Nobody did anything to document this, however, and the family taking the goat home after the auction prejudiced them.)
It’s also against the pathos of the programme? Knowing you’re raising livestock is the point.
I think they did? That's how I read "Long offered to “pay back” the fair for the loss of Cedar’s income" anyway.
It wasn’t the Fair’s property. It was the purchaser’s. The loss of income wasn’t the point. The property interest was.
Either way, regardless of the legality of the matter, I don't think you should confuse "the legal thing to do" with "the moral thing to do". They are not always identical.
This reality exists in stark contrast to the one depicted in Hallmark and Disney films, but the sad part is how little effort separated this situation from an alternative outcome.
By my reading, the family did not bring the goat to the 4H auction. Rather it seems 4H loaned them the goat to raise, with the intent that 4H would sell it at auction later.
Viewing this through the simplistic lens of property can only lead to a single conclusion. The real question is about the failings of the property model when it comes to pets. Most people consider it abhorrent that the compensation for a pet dog being murdered is anchored around the economic value of "one dog", rather than the dog's life itself plus the pain and suffering of losing a family member. And of course, our society categorically rejects the administration of human relationships in terms of property interests.
It's not a stretch to say that by raising the goat, the girl developed a type of interest in it. And to point out there was a straightforward way to respect the girl's interest while also respecting the economic interest - give the family the right of first refusal at the auction, or other appropriate compensation as the family had seemingly offered.
What are you talking about? They kept it on property and law enforcement agents turned up (without a warant, inserting themselves into a civil dispute) and stole their goat.
This is the contentious point. What business did those law enforcement agents had to enter their private property and steal a goat from them?
You can’t use property rights to defend the parents.
The goat had been auctioned. Arguing for the family is arguing for a compassionate carve-out from regular property rights.
And the family argued that they have backed out of the auction before it started. Thus they haven't sold the goat. Thus they own the goat.
Are they right? I don't know. But it is far from as straight forward as you depict it to be.
As for the cops, they got a warrant [1]. (It’s unclear if they had the right to return the property to the presumptive legal owner.)
[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf page 9
Not really, the sheriffs traveled outside their county and seized the goat without a warrant.
Where I come from this is called “cattle rustling” and is a hanging offense. Well, not really since I’m originally from California but it is definitely an illegal search and seizure.
Pretty sure they could’ve just told the sheriffs to fuck off and called the local law enforcement to straighten out that mess but most people won’t do that because they show up with tactical body armor and assault rifles.
—edit—
Contrary to TFA they did indeed have a warrant to seize Cedar…a dubious warrant maybe but a warrant they did have.
I don't know about other people, but I'm happy to admit that I'm unfamiliar with agriculture and 4H programs.
> The article literally says the girl had a breakdown _at_ the auction.
The Sacramento Bee article linked by the Guardian article says that they expressed their wish to not sell the goat before the auction.
"Before the auction began, the family asked to back out but fair officials refused, saying fair rules prohibited that and put the goat up for auction,..."
That sounds like a civilian dispute. Did the owner/family had the right to back out of the auction at that point or did they not? How can a law enforcement agent become a judge to decide on this?
On the day of. Most auctions don’t permit this. (Again, livestock auctions have a lot of law around them. Their orderly functioning underlies several states’ economies. Teaching this is sort of 4-H’a point.)
> can a law enforcement agent become a judge to decide on this?
They got a warrant [1]
[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf page 9
Well this person certainly learned an important lesson about where meat comes from.
> They got a warrant.
By misrepresenting facts. And then the warrant didn't authorise them to hand the goat over to some other third party.
This is alleged. Broadly speaking, a complaint alleging a “sham warrant” admits it’s on thin ice.
> the warrant didn't authorise them to hand the goat over to some other third party
The complaint alleges this. It’s a question of civil procedure.
Wrong.
You did not read the article closely, or you would not have made that assumption. Frankly you had no reason to make such an assumption even without reading it.
Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf
“On June 24, 2022, accompanied by Plaintiff Jessica, Plaintiff E.L. exhibited Cedar at Shasta District Fair in the junior livestock auction.”
Since we’re making assumptions about each other apparently, I’ll assume you’re from San Fransisco or Toronto or some other urban center where livestock auctions aren’t common. So allow me to inform you that the purpose of a livestock auction is to bid on livestock which most of the time will end up being bred or slaughtered.
By the way, on top of that, California law explicitly gives minors the right to back out of major sales even after they are concluded. So in fact they couldn't even have gotten money damages.
Auctions have rules. I don’t know this one’s, the complaint [1] omits much of them, but every one I’ve participated in bars backing out on the day of the auction. If you change your mind, you bid for your item.
[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf
The relevant California code (§ 6710) is superseded by federal livestock auction law [1]. Also, most contracts require the minor and a parent or guardian sign specifically to avoid this.
[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Packers_and_Stockyards_Act
Surely the world won’t stop because a minor doesn’t understand the full ramifications of a contract.
Get off your high horse.
In most nations the police makes at least a token effort to appear trustworthy for plausible deniability. From the states you get weekly reports that are so outlandishly bad that you almost can't believe it.
Really strange as a bystander.
Cops in the US get off on forcing their will on others.
It's perfectly acceptable to violate a contract. It doesn't matter you're not a fan of this. As long as you follow through with the terms of violating it.
> Breach of contract is not a crime or even a tort. Punitive damages are generally not an available remedy. The only remedies are to make the non-breaching party whole. The main theory behind this rule is that the law should not punish economically efficient breach.
The contract was not in the article but we can assume that it would be whatever financial compensation would be to make them whole. That's something they offered but the other party kept making threats that they would be criminally charged, even though the article states it was within their rights to not sell the goat.
IANAL but I can't imagine what permitted the police to be involved.
Every contract comes with its invisible body of law attached. For purchase and sale contracts, particularly those involving livestock auctions, property law comes into play. Withholding someone else’s property is criminal. The police showed discretion in not charging the family. But recovery is totally within their remit.
If they were careless and a wild animal killed the goat, theyd not of unconditionally committed a crime, theyd only need to make the other party whole.
Yes. Same way if I sell a car and then a tree falls on it, I didn’t commit fraud. But if I sell it and then refuse to deliver, the cops can execute a search-and-seizure warrant. Intent matters.
If you never deliver it, maybe that’s arguable but even then it could often be considered theft.
Perhaps the third party needs to be made whole, also. IANAL but paying off contracts is extremely common.
You are either being voluntarily ignorant or pedantic, I’m not sure which, but of course it doesn’t matter if I’m a fan of it. You know who also is a fan of enforcing contracts? The state, when they fund an agricultural program you sell an animal through and then don’t hold up your end of the bargain.
Counties are creatures of states. In some states, they’re jurisdictional boundaries. In California, they’re administrative entities [1]. (Cities, on the other hand, have jurisdictional characteristics.)
[1] https://www.counties.org/general-information/county-structur...
The parents told 4-H they changed their mind right before the auction, but the confiscation happened well after [1].
They're the executive, not the judicative. A judge would've had to make this assertion, which clearly didn't happen as they didn't have a warrant.
The officers still drove all over the state into a different jurisdiction (while using taxpayers money). They likely could've gotten the goat without making it into such a shit show, that's exactly the point I was trying to make.
If my car is stolen and I see it in someone’s garage, I absolutely expect the police to do something about it. In this case, the facts about lawful ownership were straightforward.
Purchase and sale of livestock has a deep body of law attached.
Judicial involvement isn’t always necessary, though either side can petition its review. (These cops had a warrant, by the way [1].) In this case, the parents waited until after the auction, after the seizure and after the slaughter to do that.
[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf
Clearly not, otherwise we wouldn’t be reading about it in the news. This was a civil dispute. One party is of the opinion that they bought a goat and the other party is of the opinion that they haven’t sold it. This is where you need a court to decide who is right and who is wrong.
Even if she had not been, there was a good faith dispute, under which circumstances destruction of the disputed property is not the sort of thing that a court would allow. Which is why police need to not play cowboy. By the way, if your car is stolen and you see it in somebody's garage, the police are NOT just going to grab it and hand it back to you. They'll impound it until things are settled.
Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf
The complaint leaves this far from settled.
> why police need to not play cowboy
They got a warrant [1].
> if your car is stolen and you see it in somebody's garage, the police are NOT just going to grab it and hand it back to you
I have recovered my phone from someone’s house with the help of police. They coöperated and in exchange I didn’t press charges. Had they not, I would have pressed, they’d have been arrested and sure, a court would have been involved. To the extent the police acted outside their authority, it was in not arresting.
[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf page 9
They had no warrant to search or seize the goat from the farm that it was at [1].
[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf page 11
If Sonoma Farm resisted the police, sure, there might be a Fourteenth Amendment claim in respect of the search. There is no indication they did. That makes the seizure totally valid.
The auction was not legally conducted, there was no actual transfer of ownership, and in any case what the auction falsely represented to the buyer that it had the right to sell was some meat, not a goat. You are making "factual" assertions without bothering to check them.
Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf
A judge executed a warrant for the seizure of the animal.
I think if more parents would explain to kids where meat comes from most would react like Indie-Rose - another little kid[0] - who said:
"I don't want to chop up animal people"
And there are so many more kids realizing on their own what they are eating. They don't want to eat Peppa the pig & friends and yet we (mostly) force them to eat them.
And there are so many more examples of these kids. They seem to instinctively understand what Einstein talked about in the last century [1] [2].
What do you think would happen if we show little kids the reality of slaughterhouses - they'd be traumatized for life and yet we feed them the products of those brutal and inhumane places.
One day we might end this barbarism - maybe a few more hundred years - as depicted in this optimistic future [3]
EDIT: Would be good to hear why you down vote this comment.
---
[0] https://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3151959/Tearful-f...
[1] "Our task must be to free ourselves by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature and its beauty."
[2] "Nothing will benefit human health and increase the chances for survival of life on Earth as much as the evolution to a vegetarian diet."
[3] The Dietary Requirements of a Star Fleet Officer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sS7NRtEJBcA
If those people who took away the goat had more compassion then this little girl would still have her goat friend.
The little girl and the goat had a bond and it was broken because we just view these animals as objects / property and not as sentient beings that 'are too much like us' as Carl Sagan used to say.
One can make it about anything. These parents aren’t advocating against goats being slaughtered. I doubt any of them will stop eating meat. They’re advocating for a specific property interest.
And that's the point. Should a sentient being be regarded as property?
If these parents were raising awareness for a pets’ right law, I’d be far more sympathetic. They aren’t. It’s also unclear what the ramifications would be if livestock someone else has bought can be poofed into a pet at the previous owner’s insistence.
Should a sentient being like a goat or a pig who passes the mirror test and is regarded to have the intelligence of a 2-3 year old child… should those animals be regarded as property, be exploited, made to suffer and their life taken away against their will? Even if we humans don’t need to exploit these animals anymore for our survival?
We have the technology and knowhow to feed ourselves more sustainably and without causing environmental destruction and suffering as we do now.
And where did I say animals should be regarded the same as humans?
The point is animals can suffer and they avoid pain if they can - just like we do. They seek happiness and safety - just like we do. Yet we breed them in the billions and put them in horrible living conditions just so we can have burger.
It has nothing to do with following your heart. It's following science that tells us feeding the world with animal meat is not sustainable. It's about not supporting an industry that creates immense suffering and environmental destruction.
And a plant based diet is healthy [0][1] and we have the technology to create healthier and more sustainable protein sources than factory farming animals.
[0] A community of over 17,000 physicians proving you otherwise: https://www.pcrm.org/about-us
[1] Athletes thriving on a plant-based diet: https://gamechangersmovie.com/
If you want to change someone's mind you could be less condescending. Right now, you are acting like the arrogant vegan stereotype. Do better.
I merely replied to your statement that a plant based is not healthy and pointing to PCRM. How is that condescending?
Of course there are edge cases, ie if someone has medical issues and can’t survive without meat and nothing else works then that’s a different matter.
You might find this useful https://nutritionguide.pcrm.org/nutritionguide/view/Nutritio...
Which bits were condescending to you? So I can adjust my wording and not come across condescending.
Could it be that you have a strong bias against folks who are vegan because some have a holier than though attitude? And you apply that bias towards me?
Curious to know your answers to my other questions, why you regard other sentient beings as tools and property and what gives us the right to enslave and kill those beings if our survival doesn’t depend on it.
Imagine we had a children's book that would convey these facts in a manner kids understand more easily.
And yet we hide these facts from children and we tell them to eat meat and drink milk because they need it for protein etc, even if they don't want to - happened to me and countless others (online reports).
Don't you think a child would get traumatized by the sight of a cow being shot in the head and being cut open and the guts falling out - sometimes the animal is still alive and its eyes are rolling. It's a horror show.
If a grown man (Mike Bisping - ex MMA fighter) couldn't last longer than 2 weeks working in a slaughterhouse because it's a madhouse - do you think children could stomach watching videos of that environment?
Slaughterhouse workers suffer from PTSD - some say they had to suppress their compassion to carry out the killing.
Can you elaborate?
Agenda.
- environmental destruction, biodiversity loss, Amazon destruction, overfishing etc
- causes PTSD in some slaughterhouse workers
- animals lead a miserable life and die horribly.
That's not a view but a fact.
There is a reason why kids are not being shown the reality of this.
Would you show your kid slaughterhouse scenes from this documentary - https://www.nationearth.com/ ?
Ok. The rest of it is a view!
So what I'm saying is that if we would talk to our kids about this or show them the realities of factory farms and slaughterhouses and show them that there are alternatives that don't involve all that destruction - then my view is most kids would instinctively choose the option that doesn't involve killing and making animals suffer.
I'm not saying we have to force kids - but instead give them the facts and let them decide.
But we are not doing it, since we know the reality of factory farming and slaughterhouses is grim.
Even a lot of adults can't look at that footage.
As Paul McCartney said - if slaughterhouses were made of glass and people could look into it - many would be horrified.
1) discuss a list of item 2) "hidden purpose" - which is a negative connotation.
If you mean point 2 then how is discussing with kids the facts and showing the reality of factory farming a hidden purpose?
Are you saying kids should not know what they are eating and how it's being produced?
Are you saying kids should not know what they are eating and how it's being produced?
Basically ou're saying we should hide facts from children.
How else can I interpret your answer?
If I go a step further, I could say you're following an agenda, i.e. don't tell kids that they are eating those cute animals they read about in their childrens books - because otherwise they might change their mind.
The fact that you can't answer the simple question I raised in my post above is quite telling.
Vegan = reduce suffering and cruelty to other sentient beings as practically as possible. So this means the only justification for killing an animal to consume its flesh is when our survival depends on it. That is not the case anymore for the majority of people.
My premise is around the large scale factory farm industry, which not only causes immense suffering and cruelty, but also causes great pollution and environmental destruction.
Feeding the whole world with meat is not sustainable.
That's not moving the goalpost, but a fact (See UN, IPPC and various other reports).
Like how India does it. There used to be a documentary on netflix on this. The greatest density of animals and humans, where both help each other survive.
I was asking you whether you meant that breeding more animals for slaughter would solve our high carbon footprint in the animal agriculture industry?
If yes - then it doesn't make sense, since the science community agrees we need to reduce meat and dairy consumption not increase it.
And a lot of people in India are vegetarian.
> lot of people in india are vegetarian.
Not really. Majority are not vegetarian. only Gujurat is Majority vegetarian. Every where else they are a minority. They have made it a purpose of life to feed wild animals, and live with wild animals. It's quite fascinating.
Raising more animals will mean more resources are required, such as land, water etc. It's more efficient to use that land and use that water to grow food for us.
So are you saying the scientific community is wrong by saying that the world needs to reduce meat & dairy consumption?
Most meat consumed on this planet comes from large scale animal farms, not from going out to the woods and hunting, like our ancestors did (who needed it to survive - most of us don't anymore).
I'm talking about this: https://www.nationearth.com/ - ask parents to show their kids this or just videos of factory slaughterhouses. Do you think most parents would say yes? Would they say yes to showing pictures / videos of places where workers suffer from PTSD?
My niece happily eats the chicken she helped raise and watched be slaughtered and butchered. I also knew where meat came from as a child and that didn’t bother me.
These grand moralistic pronouncements don’t seem true… and ignore that carrying them out would be the death of 35M cattle, 500M chickens, etc. A near total devastation of their species, who primarily exist as our food source.
Should we stop the worst abuses of industrial farming? — yes, and that’s already happening. But spare us the grandiose speeches demanding we cull food herds as a moral imperative.
I'm talking about the realities of factory farming and slaughterhouses - where animals lead a miserable life.
And where did I say we should kill all remaining farm animals?
Of course it would be a transition away from large scale animal farming to more sustainable plant based farming and maybe some small family run animal farms.
It would mean removing the huge subsidies the meat and factory farm industry is getting and using those subsidies to help farmers transition to sustainable farming.
The UN, scientists from the IPCC and various other organizations urge us to reduce or eliminate our consumption of meat & dairy if we want to limit global heating to 1.5C. But hey, don't look up.
And what's wrong with having moral values that extend to other living beings on this planet? Killing animals and raising them in factory farms is cruel [0] - if you disagree then I'd like to hear how it's not cruel. Do you think an animal happily gives up their life so we can have a burger?
Why kill and enslave animals if we don't need to?
[0] Richard Dawkins: No Civilized Person Accepts Slavery So Why Do We Accept Animal Cruelty? | Big Think
Right here:
> Why kill and enslave animals if we don't need to?
Where do you think the animals go, if we stop using them for food?
You come across as demanding we cull our food herds, without replacing them — and then justifying it by saying that an animal wouldn’t want to be a burger… apparently saying they’d rather their species be annihilated entirely.
I’d rather have a harsh life than no life — why would I assume the opposite about animals?
Of course things wouldn't change over night. But if more people chose not to consume factory farm animal products - the demand would go down over time and we would not breed as many anymore.
It would be a slow phasing out and a transition to more sustainable food sources.
> I’d rather have a harsh life than no life
Please watch Earthlings[0] - the documentary about the factory farm industry and how animals live. Tell me you would want to live under those conditions. And no - those are not isolated, it's the reality for factory farm animals.
Those cows, chickens and pigs in factory farms are not wild species anymore. We bred them to the point where we maximized their meat or egg production at the expense of their health, e.g. chickens grow so large they can't stand on their own legs anymore.
And we have many sanctuaries now - where farm animals are being rescued and they can live to their natural end, so they would continue to exist.
So if you had the choice - what would you choose for yourself:
1) Not be born
2) Be born into a system where you will suffer and lead a horrible life and at the end you will be slaughtered just because someone wants a burger.
Why do we as a people bother producing things like Hallmark movies if this is the awful reality of american life, devoid of sentimentality, kindness and patience? I hope people consume such media because they aspire for things to be better some day.
They should absolutely be allowed to back out of the auction with reasonable notice. And I can empathise—if someone came for my pets I’d do what was necessary, the law be damned. But they proceeded idiotically and are now filing petty suits against the cops of all people, cops who executed a warrant signed by a judge.
I believe there should have been leeway. But remedy under the law? The parents are suing. They aren’t advocating for a bill providing for pets’ rights. They aren’t raising money for a shelter. They’re litigating on scarce technicalities in civil procedure in pursuit of a payout and possibly vengeance, the end result of which will be minor rulebook amendments and lawyers paid handsomely on all sides.
Accommodations are exceptions. We can hope they occur. But we can’t throw a tantrum when they don’t materialise.
Since you wish to dwell on the mundane, however:
You can throw a tantrum for any reason you like. It is your god-given right as a human to throw a tantrum, and it is constitutionally protected, to boot. Additionally, you can sue any american for any legally based reason you can think of. That is also a legal right afforded to you. You have a right to seek remedy under law for legal matters if you feel so inclined. It is additionally your right to not advocate for pet's rights. It is lastly your right to not raise money for a shelter.
Victim blaming and then going on to expect a victim to arbitrarily perform moral penance to your standards in lieu of seeking restitution is a bizarre position. The courts will promptly resolve this business in due course and in concert with lawyers will bill the victim accordingly for the cost of their use.
4-H doesn’t get to use its principles to force an auction upon unwilling sellers. If they had partial or full ownership of the goat this might be different but as long as the parents and child have bought the goat as part of raising it they can’t proceed with the auction against the wishes of that parent and child.
4-H programs typically loan a goat to a family to raise for the intention of teaching livestock husbandry. The goat is never legally the family’s property. (Not sure about this case.)
EDIT: It appears this program involves purchasing the goat. Suing the police is still stupid. They were enforcing a purchase and sale under warrant [1]. There may be a case against the Fair, depending on when the auction contract bound the parents to the sale. (The parents attempted to terminate the auction on the show date. Had they done so literally the day before, this would have been, based on the case, open and shut.)
[1] https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf page 9
4-H (or somebody) sold her the goat, and in fact their rules required her to maintain legal ownership of the goat. You are making statments of "fact" without checking them.
Complaint: https://dig.abclocal.go.com/kgo/PDF/2022-08-31-Complaint.pdf
But this sounds like there was a contract that the parents were attempting to back out of…because the girl threw a tantrum. It’s ok to ask, but offering to pay the value of the goat doesn’t mean they have to accept the payment and void the contract.
It "sounds" to you like there was a contract because that's what you want to believe. The article doesn't say there was a contract, and the complaint goes into considerable detail about how (a) there was no contract, (b) if there had been a contract, she would have had the right to rescind it.
Also, fuck the 4-H experience...
There absolutely was. Between the Fair and the family, when they first put the animal on auction. Between the Fair and the purchaser, when it was auctioned.
We don’t have their details. But they definitely existed.
If I was the family, I guess I would have purchased a second goat and pretended it was the first, but why the hell do we have to employ cunning for something this mundane. This is a real vogon story.
Or bid on their own goat
It wouldn't even have to be alive. Tell them it got hit by the lawnmower.
People just don't think these things through.