Geronimo the alpaca to be slaughtered after owner loses High Court bid to save him

An alpaca named Geronimo who twice tested positive for bovine tuberculosis will be slaughtered after his owner lost a last-ditch high court bid to save him.

The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) ordered the animal’s destruction after he was imported from New Zealand but failed two tests.

However his owner, Helen Macdonald, has said the tests are returning false positives and she has been refused permission to have him tested a third time.

Earlier this month she lost her final appeal to save her beloved pet at the High Court in London and a warrant was signed for his destruction.

On Tuesday, an urgent application for a temporary injunction to halt the enforcement of the destruction order was considered by Mrs Justice Stacey.

However, the judge said she would need further information from Ms Macdonald and from government lawyers before she could make her decision, and said she would resume the hearing on Wednesday afternoon.

At court on Wednesday, the judge refused the urgent application and concluded there was “no prospect” of Ms Macdonald succeeding in her bid to reopen a previous ruling.

Ned Westaway, representing the Defra executive agency the Animal and Plant Health Agency (Apha), told the court the agency will not seek to execute the warrant on Wednesday evening, and would give Ms Macdonald the opportunity to make her own arrangements for Geronimo‘s destruction.

Ms Macdonald’s lawyers told the court Geronimo first tested positive for bovine tuberculosis in September 2017 and has been in isolation since.

Catrin McGahey QC told the court that although Defra argued in previous hearings that there was a “residual risk” to other animals, the agency has also agreed Ms Macdonald’s bio-security arrangements are “impeccable”.

She said it had come to light following the publicity resulting from Ms Macdonald’s case that other animals who have been subjected to the same testing regime as Geronimo have later showed no signs of the disease after being euthanised.

Ms McGahey said: “The only issue is whether the defendants should have disclosed the fact that they had in their possession evidence that other camelids who had been subjected to repeated priming had gone on to test positive in Enferplex tests, and that there had been no sign of bovine tuberculosis on post-mortem examination.”

The barrister said the publicity had led the Daily Mail to find the owners of nine other camelids who were tested under the same regime, whose animals showed no signs of the disease after slaughter.

However, following an adjournment to allow Ms Macdonald’s lawyers to decide what evidence they wish Defra to produce and a time estimate of how long that may take, the judge refused to grant injunctions to spare Geronimo pending a further hearing and for disclosure.

Mrs Justice Stacey said that on the evidence before her, Ms Macdonald had not succeeded in showing there was any prospect of her reopening the litigation.

She said the farmer’s complaint about non-disclosure did not give rise to an arguable case, but was a “disingenuous and backdoor way of seeking a further route to appeal” when there was none left.

Last week the government insisted all the evidence on the animal’s condition had been “looked at very carefully”.

A Defra spokesman said on Wednesday: “There are no plans to execute the warrant today. We are sympathetic to Ms Macdonald’s situation, just as we are with everyone with animals affected by this terrible disease.

“It is for this reason that the testing results and options for Geronimo have been very carefully considered by Defra, the Animal and Plant Health Agency and its veterinary experts, as well as passing several stages of thorough legal scrutiny.

“Bovine tuberculosis is one of the greatest animal health threats we face today and causes devastation and distress for farming families and rural communities across the country, while costing the taxpayer around £100m every year.

“Therefore, while nobody wants to cull infected animals, we need to do everything we can to tackle this disease to stop it spreading and to protect the livelihoods of those affected.”

Ms Macdonald, who owns a farm at Wickwar, South Gloucestershire, has received an outpouring of support from the public, with more than 130,000 people signing a petition calling on Boris Johnson to halt the killing.

Earlier this month dozens of people demonstrated outside the Defra office in Westminster against the decision to kill the eight-year-old alpaca.

Holding placards and chanting “Retest, not death”, protesters called on the environment secretary, George Eustice, to spare Geronimo’s life, insisting that the testing system the government used to diagnose him with BTB is invalid and outdated.

The campaigners have said that the tuberculin primer injected into the alpaca’s skin, used to increase the sensitivity of the blood tests, can return false positives.

Additional reporting by PA