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Protesters demonstrate against the ruling that Geronimo, an Alpaca believed to be carrying TB, has to be euthanised, in London, England on August 9, 2021.
PETER NICHOLLS/Reuters
As he trots in his small pen, Geronimo looks much like the other 80 alpacas wandering around Helen Macdonald’s farm in western England.
But the eight-year-old camelid has become a cause célèbre for animal lovers around the world because of a power struggle between Ms. Macdonald and government veterinarians who want to kill Geronimo.
Officials in Britain’s Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, or DEFRA, say Geronimo has to be put down because he has twice tested positive for bovine tuberculosis, or bTB, an infectious disease that can be passed on to humans. The government has been struggling to control bTB in recent years and more than 38,000 animals were destroyed last year to stop the spread of the disease.
Ms. Macdonald, 50, says the government’s tests are flawed and she has waged a four-year legal battle to have Geronimo retested, arguing he has shown no signs of sickness.
Last month, a High Court judge ruled against her and upheld a DEFRA death warrant. Ms. Macdonald filed a last-ditch motion on Friday requesting a delay to the execution while she filed more documents. On Monday, the court agreed to hold a hearing to review the material, but it has yet to issue an injunction blocking the warrant, which is valid until Sept. 4. She’s asked DEFRA to hold off until the hearing, but so far the agency has been noncommittal.
“It’s really stressful, I can’t tell you,” Ms. Macdonald said in an interview from her farm in Gloucestershire. “At times it’s almost overwhelming.”
Geronimo’s plight has become something of a national obsession. Animal rights groups, celebrities and even Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s father, Stanley, have urged the government to spare the animal. There have also been noisy protests outside Parliament and more than 130,000 people have signed a petition calling on the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, George Eustice, to withdraw the warrant.
Dozens of “alpaca angels” have also descended on Ms. Macdonald’s farm and vowed to form a human shield to protect the animal. They’ve also set up a webcam overlooking Geronimo’s pen so that global supporters can keep tabs on him. “The question is, does the U.K. government really want to kill a known healthy animal with the whole world watching on webcam?” Ms. Macdonald said.
Alpacas are native to South America but they’ve grown in popularity in Britain and elsewhere because of their durable fleece, which can be used to make everything from hats, sweaters and coats to rugs and shoe insoles. There are roughly 45,000 alpacas in Britain and Ms. Macdonald has been breeding them for 15 years on her farm called Alpaca Power.
She imported Geronimo in 2017 from a ranch in New Zealand, hoping to add to her bloodline of jet-black alpacas. Ms. Macdonald, who is a trained veterinary nurse, said he tested negative for bTB four times in New Zealand and the Kiwi herd hadn’t had a case of the disease in 26 years.
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To check for bTB, the New Zealand farm used a common procedure called a skin test. It involves injecting animals with tuberculin, a mixture of proteins extracted from dead bovine TB bacteria. If the animal is infected, its immune system will kick in and cause swelling in the area around the injection. The size of the lump determines whether the animal has to be killed.
When Geronimo arrived in Britain, he had an Enferplex blood test, which the government said was recommended for alpacas. The test looks for antibodies that have been made in response to proteins produced by TB bacteria and, in Geronimo’s case, it came back positive. Ms. Macdonald said the test had picked up the tuberculin in his system, which caused a false positive result. DEFRA vets performed a second Enferplex test, which also came back positive.
Ms. Macdonald headed to court, arguing the tests were flawed because DEFRA kept priming Geronimo with tuberculin. She noted that he hadn’t shown any signs of the disease, and neither had any of the other alpacas on her farm or the 27 animals that travelled with Geronimo to England. She has urged DEFRA to conduct another test or isolate Geronimo for research purposes instead of killing him. “We just think there is nothing wrong with Geronimo and the longer he’s alive, the more likely we’ve got a chance to prove it,” said Ms. Macdonald, who has the backing of the British Alpaca Society.
DEFRA has countered that the chances of a false positive with the Enferplex test are less than 1 per cent. “The injection of tuberculin does not induce a false positive antibody response in animals that are not infected with bTB in the first place,” the agency said. “The injection of tuberculin essentially amplifies the antibodies already induced by an existing infection. It does not trigger the production of a new antibody response in TB-free animals.”
Officials have argued that a further test would be futile and open the door for other owners to make similar demands. “While I sympathize with Ms. Macdonald’s situation, we need to follow the scientific evidence and cull animals that have tested positive for TB,” said the government’s Chief Veterinary Officer, Christine Middlemiss.
Ms. Macdonald said the prolonged battle has cost at least ￡43,000 ($73,848) in legal fees and ruined her business because the farm is under quarantine until the case is resolved. “My farming income is absolutely negative,” she said. “I can’t sell anything. I can’t breed any more.”
If government vets come to kill Geronimo, Ms. Macdonald said she won’t break the law. “But we’re not going to make it easy for them, absolutely not,” she added defiantly. “We’re certainly not giving up, that’s for sure. We’re going to give it everything we’ve got and a bit more.”
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