Welp those cops just created a deeply committed animal rights activist and vegetarian for life. Probably.
It’ll be instructive to see how this young woman spends her time and energy in the future.
In the meantime, anyone paying attention to this story gets a good clear look at Shasta County and the people who run it: by their fruits shall we know them.
“sending cops 500 miles” is par for the course in California. Imagine if California had been smaller, and it had been a federal case by virtue of crossing state lines.
My wife grew up north of the area in question - 4h will sell goats like this with a contract attached to force the sale - it’s intended to teach future farmers about raising livestock.
Having a contract makes this legal - and she’s going to loose in court - but that doesn’t make the other parties less of an asshole.
IANAL but… who were the parties to this contract? If one of them was a nine-year-old (in the absence of being executed on her behalf by a guardian) then it’s probably not enforceable.
This is how poultry is raised in the USA. The chicken processor literally farms out the rearing of chickens to independent operators, who then return the mature birds for slaughter.
Refused, even when offered the full value of the meat
Evil for evil’s sake. This kind of thing is why it’s impossible to dehumanize these monsters. They do it all themselves.
My wife tells me 4h would have the kid and parents sign - one of the reasons she did the FFA program instead - myself I don’t know personally - nor do I know if it’s the same - her experience was 30 years ago so…
Also consider that they turned down the money, knowing that they would still have to give her the money it sold for. Fairs only keep a modest fee, maybe 10%, of the sale.
So there was no monetary loss for the fair. This really was just about teaching the girl a lesson.
The snag for the fair is that they sent out cops to enforce their contract instead of going through the courts. This shows that their whole interest was in making sure the goal was slaughtered, irrespective of its ownership or value. It was an act of spite, to put the girl in her place.
It hints at the real purpose of the auctions and the animal husbandry show around it: to desensitize children to animal slaughter. That’s why it’s so important this girl lose after withdrawing her goat. She can’t be seen by other kids to have not been desensitized. Their desensitization depends on group dynamics.
Slaughter is a fact of life in the country and our city-slicker dinner plates. But they still veil it in the smarmy language of youth potential, so you know what? They can damn well put up with the consequences of youths potentiating themselves otherwise. They can figure a way out that doesn’t involve such oppressive, sadistic treatment of a little girl.
It’s already a wild contract where parents are acting as cutouts for child parties, but America is full of that shit (see also: tough love camps that narcissists disappear their embarassing kids to). Having it enforced by armed cops, though, that might just have caused a real problem this time for team cruelty-is-the-point.
People at the tops of their own little local fiefdoms of fairs, small towns and churches still haven’t gotten the memo that news gets around now. They are so used to having zero accountability from anyone not in their circle of influence I think it honestly comes as a surprise when anyone looks at things from a view that isn’t theirs.
There must be something we are missing here, some economic incentive. Cruelty is usually not the point. Usually the point is incompetence or greed or fear.
Yeah. They came and killed my neighbor’s bunnies in front of us. I lost all interest at that point.
Nope. They were offered a profit on it. Paying multiple cops to make a 500 mile trip costs a lot of money. There’s no other incentive than making kids pro-slaughter at the point of a gun.
Do county sheriffs have reciprocal jurisdiction or something?
I bet you are right.
Less and less every year. I used to think bad people were motivated by self-interest. And while many are, the past few years, in particular the anti-masking movement, have made it crystal clear that for a lot of people, cruelty is worth any price.
growing up in central texas in the 60s and 70s we had a farm where we raised dairy goats. mum and papi were “back to the landers” of that time and our farm was supposed to be as close to self sufficient as possible.
goats - especially baby goats - are adorable and hard not to become deeply attached to. thay are smart, curious, playful and very affectionate. our small herd of 35 does needed only one buck to keep us and several families we sold or traded milk to bountifully supplied. we raised a great many kids over the years and kept the does, but culled the baby bucks. this meant either selling them or castrating, fattening ad ultimately slaughtering them for our own consumption. the lesson to me and dear brother was you do not get attached to the baby bucks, no matter how fucking cute they were. papi said “you can name all the does however you like, but the only name for a buck was ‘barbecue’”.
this young person’s goat was a buck* and destined only to ever be a pet, which is fine and does not require the action of the asshole county fair or the bastard cops
*from the article:
“As a result, the young girl who raised Cedar lost him, and Cedar lost his life".
long story, get to the point:
my personal point of view is that the 9 year old girl was far too young to be involved in such a “contract” with the fair organizers. how could you expect a young child not to bond with the animal?! the additional cruelty on the part of the fair organizers will cause lasting trauma. that breaks my heart.
I place plenty of blame on the Parents for getting her involved in the entire thing and then letting her get attached to it. You don’t want to get attached to livestock you intend to slaughter, kids don’t get that - so there is quite a bit of parental blame here.
That said they at least attempted to take responsibility for the mistake - letting the girl keep this as a pet - and paying for the value is how you admit you did something wrong and owning up to it.
Yeah, this is just weird. I loan out the rear acreage and barns to a neighbor who raises and sells prize-winning Boer goat kids exclusively to the 4-H crowd, and a goodly number of them end up as pets rather than auction fodder at the end of the season. No question as to who owns the kids – the kids are sold, and exclusively the buyer’s responsibility, though my neighbor will cheerfully walk them through how to raise a prize-winning goat if they have the discipline to follow his instructions exactly.
Perhaps the 4H committee believed that the nine year old farmer had intended to do this as part of a scheme to disrupt the 4H contest–vegans have targeted such programmes for years.
