20 Aug 2021
The alpaca, owned by RVN and breeder Helen Macdonald, was ordered to be slaughtered following a High Court hearing on 29 July, but is still alive – in part due to ongoing pressure from protesters who believe that Defra’s testing regimes are based on bad science.
Joshua Silverwood
Job Title
Geronimo the alpaca.
An alpaca sentenced to death after testing positive for bTB has sparked a debate in the profession about how the Government should handle the chronic disease.
Geronimo, owned by RVN and alpaca breeder Helen Macdonald, was ordered to be slaughtered following a High Court hearing on 29 July, but is still alive – in part due to ongoing pressure from protesters who believe that Defra’s testing regimes are based on bad science.
Many of them marched on Defra’s headquarters on 9 August calling on the Government to halt the alpaca’s execution and re-examine its TB testing and slaughter policy.
Ms Macdonald had been granted a reprieve awaiting the outcome of a further High Court hearing, which she lost on 18 August.
Vet and TB researcher Iain McGill has said he is gravely concerned about the way Geronimo was tested, stating some scientists – including UK CVO Christine Middlemiss – claim that the Enferplex test when used on camelids is 99% effective.
Dr McGill said: “I have grave concerns; I think it is a very unsafe diagnosis. The way they are using it in UK alpacas is by first priming with purified protein derivative tuberculin, before taking the blood sample for Enferplex.
“Tuberculin is not a predictable protein, it’s an unpredictable protein soup. Unsurprisingly, it does increase antibodies to bTB antigens in cattle, and the small amount of detail Defra has thus far released strongly suggests it can do exactly the same thing in alpacas.
“Defra is perpetuating a system of trying to kill its way out of trouble. It’s the way disease was controlled in the 19th century, where it was used extensively to ‘stamp out’ rinderpest.
“As a profession, we need to move away from killing things when we don’t quite understand what’s going on. Geronimo is a shining example of that. Cattle owners will rightly say ‘well, what about my cattle?’ And I would say, exactly.
“Some of the cattle killed as a result of the bTB policy are due to false positives, particularly where gamma interferon testing is used in addition to the skin test, and Defra openly admits that. Some of these gamma positive cattle are genuinely not infected with bTB.
“The killing can’t continue. It’s simply not working. We need to think of an alternative strategy to deal with bTB that is totally different from one based on ‘test and slaughter’.”
Dr McGill argued the main reason Defra was refusing to acknowledge the potential flaws in its TB controls was due to the potential legal backlash from farmers should the Government department admit faults in its system.
Dr McGill added: “The reason they want to make an example of Geronimo by killing him is that they are hoping the problem will then go away. But I think it has opened a can of worms for the Government.
“This isn’t just the tide turning, this is a tsunami that is going to change the way that TB is controlled.
“I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel for farmers. If Defra can just sit down and have a grown-up conversation with myself and colleagues – with representatives from the BVA, the BCVA, the farming community, the CVO and George Eustice or even Boris Johnson – and say ‘look, there’s another whole way of doing this that involves swapping out all the killing and all the testing’.
“Poor farmers in the West Country are now going to have to endure bTB testing every six months. Can you imagine the stress and terror that places on farmers’ families – Russian roulette with the fear of loss, business costs, trading restrictions and heartbreak at losing their cows?
“I think there is another way of approaching the disease. Would farmers be willing to swap bTB testing, and all that terror and heartbreak, to a system largely without cattle movements, with slurry controls, without the unnecessary mass killing of wildlife and the destruction of the ecosystem, and – as well as losing the terror of testing – to be offered vaccination instead?”
Vet Times contacted Defra, which declined to comment citing ongoing legal proceedings.
