West Sussex animal welfare group fight for Geronimo

Monday, 9 August 2021 14:40

By RNHJourno

Born Free say Geronimo needs to be tested with a more reliable method.

An animal rights organisation from West Sussex is urging the government to roll out a new type of blood testing for Bovine TB to stop unnecessary culling because of false positive results.

Born Free is supporting a protest on Downing Street to change the fate of Geronimo the Alpaca who has been ordered to be put down after testing positive for the infectious disease.

His owner, Helen Macdonald, who imported him from New Zealand, believes the tests are returning false positives, but has been refused permission to have him tested a third time.

Last week, Ms Macdonald lost her final appeal to save her beloved pet at the High Court in London and now a warrant has been signed for his destruction.

But she has received an outpouring of support from the public, with more than 90,000 people signing a petition calling on Boris Johnson to halt the killing.

There is a test which, instead of injecting part of the virus into the animal to test whether it has Bovine TB or not, it tests the blood to see if there is any trace of the virus there. It's called a Actiphage PCR blood test. The only problem is it has not yet been approved by Government and needs special approval for use.

Ms Macdonald hopes the protest today will lead to Geronimo getting this test so she can try to prove he is not infected.

Dr Mark Jones is a vet and Head of Policy at Born Free and said hundred of thousands of animals are killed every year because of getting infectious diseases, particularly cows and badgers, and it's possible they too could have given false positive tests.

He said: "We really do have to focus our attention on getting these [new] tests validated, getting vaccines up and running for cattle and wildlife and moving away from a system where so many animals get destroyed, so many of which probably aren't infected."

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