Shasta County will pay $300K to settle slaughter of girl’s pet goat seized by sheriff’s deputies
Shasta County will pay a partial six-figure settlement to the family of the girl who owned Cedar the goat, two years after Shasta deputies seized the animal for slaughter after she pulled the goat out of a fair auction triggering tears, outrage and competing lawsuits.
“Unfortunately, this litigation cannot bring Cedar home. But the $300,000 settlement with the county of Shasta and Shasta County Sheriff’s Office is the first step in moving forward,” attorney Vanessa Shakib, co-director of Advancing Law for Animals, said in a statement announcing the pact. “We continue to litigate against the California fair entity and related employees, and 4-H volunteer.”
The girl will receive $65,000 in the settlement, court papers show.
Cedar was 4 months old in April 2022 when Jessica Long bought the white Boer goat for $300 for her 9-year-old daughter ahead of the Shasta District Fair that June. The family registered the young goat in the fair’s junior livestock auction, but as June approached, Long’s daughter couldn’t bring herself to put Cedar on the auction block.
The girl “raised Cedar, bonded with him, loved him like a pet, and ultimately wanted to save him,” Shakib said in court filings.
The girl “exercised her rights” as a minor to reject any contracts for Cedar’s sale. Her family tried to withdraw the goat from auction before bidding began and promised recompense to the goat’s buyer and fair in writing for any losses due to Cedar’s removal, The Bee reported.
Shasta fair officials refused and Cedar was sold for $902.
The fair and the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which oversees the state’s 70-plus fairs, said Cedar had to be returned, even after the buyer of the goat agreed to let Cedar go back to the family, The Bee reported.
Rules are rules, Shasta District Fair officials told Long. The livestock auctions are designed to teach future farmers and ranchers responsibility and how to raise animals for food, they said.
Another fair official, B.J Macfarlane, threatened the family with a grand theft charge, in calls and texts, alleged the girl’s civil rights lawsuit, filed in Sacramento federal court.
Long had found a home for Cedar at a Sonoma County farm but Shasta County Sheriff’s deputies called in by Shasta fair officials were soon on the hunt for the goat.
The deputies took the 200-mile drive, search warrants in hand, to a Napa County sanctuary where they thought Cedar was housed. The deputies learned the goat was in neighboring Sonoma and retrieved the animal for the long drive back to Shasta County and the slaughterhouse.
The legal fight only intensified. The California Attorney General’s office countersued in November 2023 to have the girl’s lawsuit dismissed, saying the federal court had no jurisdiction. A deputy attorney general’s counterclaim argued that Long, the girl’s mother, pay the fair officials’ legal expenses because Long signed a contract when Cedar was entered into the auction.
The case would garner international attention and also placed new attention on farming education programs like 4-H and Future Farmers of America.
The girl’s attorneys blasted the suit, saying the state and the Shasta District Fair “again have overstepped the boundaries of law and decency.”
“These baseless counterclaims have one purpose: to intimidate Mrs. Long and her daughter to either drop their case or face a hefty price tag,” Shakib told The Bee via email last November.
The girl’s attorneys in court filings said they and Shasta County had discussed a potential settlement “on and off” since the beginning of the case in 2022, but the sides failed to come to agreement before settlement talks renewed in March.
The sides again failed to agree to a deal at a mandatory Aug. 5 settlement conference before reaching an accord on Aug. 28.
