Owner vows to continue fight following Geronimo’s slaughter 

The owner of an alpaca taken by force before being euthanised by Government vets today (31 August) has vowed to continue her fight to expose flaws in the bTB testing regime.

Geronimo – an alpaca APHA claims has bTB – was taken from the farm where he lived in Wickwar, South Gloucestershire just before 11am by employees of APHA, accompanied by officers from Avon and Somerset Police.

Slaughter policy

The pet alpaca, owned by RVN and alpaca breeder Helen Macdonald, was ordered to be slaughtered following a High Court hearing on 29 July, but had earned a stay of execution – in part due to ongoing pressure from protestors who believe that Defra’s testing regimes are based on bad science.

Many of them marched on Defra’s headquarters on 9 August to call on the Government to halt the alpaca’s execution, and re-examine its bTB testing and slaughter policy.

Independent postmortem

Ms Macdonald was then granted another reprieve awaiting the outcome of a further High Court hearing, which she lost on 18 August, leaving her powerless to prevent Geronimo’s death.

Now she is demanding the presence of an independent vet at the postmortem, which she believes will prove her beloved pet was in fact disease free.

‘Duped’

Ms Macdonald said: “We need an independent vet at the postmortem as APHA are going to fudge it, I know they are – they do not want to admit that that animal was disease free, we know he is disease free.

“They have duped us completely; we have been in conversation with government for two weeks, trying to get a positive outcome here for research into TB, and they have duped us all the way along.

“They have just played the game, but they had set out all along to kill Geronimo.”

Turning point

Ms Macdonald went on to restate her assertion that Geronimo had never been exposed to bTB and that claims her pet failed bTB tests were just “spin and propaganda”.

Now she believes Geronimo’s death will prove to be a turning point in the fight to overhaul the Government’s controversial approach to tackling the disease.

‘Martyrised’

Ms Macdonald added: “The shit is going to hit the fan now; this is not going away, we are going to carry on the fight – look at all the animals we have lost; look at all the cattle that have been badly tested and all the badgers that have been killed for no good reason.

“This has just exposed the whole bloody thing and they have martyrised Geronimo now, who will stand for every animal wrongly killed in this country until we get this sorted.”