‘Goatgate’: Fight over Cedar the goat turns to who ate Northern California girl’s pet

Who ate Cedar the goat?

Nearly two years after a Northern California family bought the 4-month-old goat for their daughter, then spirited it away from a county fair before it could be auctioned for its meat, that question remains at the center of a legal fight over what happened to Cedar.

A federal civil rights lawsuit filed on behalf of Cedar’s 9-year-old owner in 2022 has sparked an intense legal fight involving a search warrant, a countersuit by Attorney General Rob Bonta’s office and depositions and subpoenas for phone, text and business records.

The dispute also spawned a California Assembly bill that would allow families to withdraw their children’s animals from auctions before they are transported from a fair for slaughter.

And the fight has drawn national scrutiny, ridicule and death threats for the principals involved in Shasta County, where the brown and white goat was last seen and, according to court records, was slaughtered on June 28, 2022.

But documents filed in Sacramento federal court this month show there still is no clear answer as to when or where Cedar was killed, or who ended up with his meat.

“This is just the dumbest thing I have ever heard of, over a stupid goat,” said Serene Nehls, co-owner of Bowman Meat Co. in Cottonwood, who says her family butcher shop has been wrongly dragged into the controversy.

“They’ve subpoenaed me three times over this stupid thing. They finally sent me an affidavit the other day to say that we did not kill that goat.”

Who ultimately killed Cedar and who ate it remains unclear, despite court filings suggesting that Redding’s Vista Real Estate firm may have ended up with the meat, something the company owner flatly denies.

“We didn’t get Cedar or Cedar’s meat,” owner Chad Phillips said in a phone interview last week, during which he referred to the controversy as “Goatgate.”

“I just know about it from the local news coverage here. I imagine the attorneys are just casting a wide net.”

The state’s countersuit has since been dismissed, but the amount of legal effort that has gone into the dispute over Cedar rivals some lawsuits that have made their way through federal court in Sacramento over claims involving police brutality or financial fraud accusations.

Few cases have drawn as much as attention as the one involving Cedar, whose short life has now gone viral.

“The top three most popular tweets about Cedar’s case obtained over 16 million impressions,” say court papers filed in December by lawyers for the family that owned Cedar. “One petition seeking justice for Cedar obtained 79,516 supporters, while another petition obtained 43,065 supporters.”

The saga began when Jessica Long decided in 2022 to enter her 9-year-old daughter’s goat in the Shasta District Fair’s junior livestock auction, which is an annual affair that includes a “terminal sale” in which the animals are sold off to the highest bidder to be slaughtered for their meat.

By the time Cedar was auctioned off on June 25 to a representative of state Sen. Brian Dahle, R-Bieber, for $902, the girl, identified in court papers as “E.L.” because she is a minor, had become overwhelmed at the thought of her pet goat being killed and eaten.

After seeing the little girl sobbing in Cedar’s pen at the fair, Long liberated the goat from the barn and drove it to an animal sanctuary in Sonoma County.

She also sought to reason with fair officials, offering to pay for any expenses and receiving permission from Dahle’s office to cancel the sale.

But officials from the fair and the California Department of Food and Agriculture, which oversees fair districts, were having none of it.

Bruce John “BJ” Macfarlane, the livestock manager for the Shasta District Fair, called and threatened Long with a grand theft charge if Cedar was not returned, court records say.

“I asked her that we need to get the goat back,” Macfarlane said during a November deposition, portions of which were filed in court this month. “And she said, ‘There’s got to be some other way.’

“And I said, ‘No, there’s no other way, that you don’t own the goat at this time. It’s my opinion you’re stealing something over $400 of agricultural commodities. It’s considered a felony,’ which I had to look it up.”

Eventually, the Shasta County Sheriff’s Office was on the case.

On July 8, 2022, two sheriff’s officials drove more than 200 miles to retrieve Cedar from a goat farm in Sonoma County and deposited him with Macfarlane, court records say.

“Goat is at my house...” Macfarlane texted Kathie Muse, a 4-H volunteer and an organizer of the fair’s annual barbecue. “Talked to sheriff and he said to wait until he talks to DA before we kill goat.

“It is perfectly fine at my house till we figure it out.”

While Cedar was spending his final days at Mcfarlane’s home, lawyers for the family that owned Cedar were calling Shasta County sheriff’s and county officials trying to determine whether the goat was still alive, but say they were stonewalled.

Now, legal filings by Long family lawyers Ryan Gordon and Vanessa Shakib question how forthcoming Macfarlane, Muse and Shasta District Fair Chief Executive Officer Melanie Silva have been about what happened to Cedar.

“To date, neither Ms. Silva, Mr. Macfarlane, nor Mrs. Muse have offered any credible testimony as to who greenlit Cedar’s death, or who, if anyone, received Cedar’s meat,” a filing from the attorneys says. “Ms. Silva, Mr. Macfarlane, and Mrs. Muse all originally stated they did not know who received Cedar’s meat.”

Court filings pinpoint the date of Cedar’s demise as July 28, 2022, and Macfarlane said in his first deposition that Bowman Meats came to his house and retrieved the goat.

In a second deposition in February, Macfarlane testified that he was told Vista Real Estate ended up with Cedar’s meat.

The Long family attorneys are now seeking a court order directed at Bowman Meats for “all records related to a goat it slaughtered, or assisted in the slaughter of, on about July 28, 2022, at the request of BJ Macfarlane, including, but not limited to, records reflecting the person(s) or company who received the animal’s meat.”

The lawyers also have asked for an order compelling production of all Vista Real Estate records “related to any goat meat Vista Real Estate acquired from, or that related to, the Shasta District Fair & Event Center between June 25, 2022, and September 1, 2022.”

“Oh, my God, when are they going to leave us alone?” Nehls, the Bowman Meats co-owner, asked when contacted last week by The Sacramento Bee.

Nehls said Bowman Meats never saw Cedar, adding that the butcher shop’s “kill schedule” is for slaughtering on Wednesdays and Fridays and that Cedar was supposedly picked up from Macfarlane’s and killed on July 28, 2022 — a Thursday.

She added that a mobile slaughterer she sent out to Macfarlane’s to get a goat during that time frame would have gone on a Saturday because he works during the week as a state worker, and that he later told her the goat he killed and skinned on site was black and white, not a white and brown goat like Cedar.

“He just brought the carcass here,” she said. “The only thing I received was a carcass.

“If it was a black and white goat it couldn’t have been him. It couldn’t have been. It’s just as simple as that.”

A written declaration Nehls sent to the Long family lawyers this month states that the goat taken from Macfarlane’s was to go to Vista Real Estate as a replacement for another goat that had been deemed “inadequate” and needed to be replaced.

“This is totally a nightmare,” she added. “They’re putting it out there that we did something we did not do, and that’s not right to me.”

Phillips, of Vista Real Estate, said his firm always supports 4-H efforts by buying animals at auction.

“We always buy a couple of animals,” he said. “The kids work hard.

“We believe it instills a good work ethic.”

He added that the goat he received came from a family he knows, and that its name was “Loin, like in a pork loin.”

“It’s delicious,” he said. “It’s basically lamb with a lesser marketing pedigree.”

And, he added, the only thing he knows about Cedar comes from the media coverage.

“I don’t even have a strong opinion on the Cedar thing,” Phillips said. “I’ve got a heart for the little girl, and I’ve got a heart for the goat, and I’ve got a heart for 4-H.”