Keir Starmer should review killing of Geronimo the alpaca, says farmer

A woman who believes her alpaca was unlawfully executed by the state in a miscarriage of justice has said the prime minister should re-examine the case.

Alpaca breeder Helen Macdonald said she urgently wanted to meet the newly appointed Labour government to discuss the fate of Geronimo, who was euthanised by the government in August 2021 after twice testing positive for contagious bovine tuberculosis.

She has always maintained the testing of her eight-year-old alpaca, who lived on her Gloucestershire farm, produced flawed “false positives”. A government postmortem was unable to find evidence that Geronimo did actually have the disease .

The veterinary nurse said Keir Starmer was already aware of the alpaca because he publicly backed its slaughter back in 2021 . Speaking from her farm before the third anniversary of the animal’s death, she said of the prime minister: “He was aware about Geronimo at the time when Geronimo was still alive … I challenged him publicly at the time and I’ve never heard from him. It would be nice to sit down and show him the evidence. People make assumptions and don’t know the evidence.”

Macdonald said she hoped to meet the new Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) ministers Steve Reed and Daniel Zeichner to discuss unresolved issues around the death of her alpaca. She said ministers had to deal with the legacy of the previous Conservative government: “They’ve inherited this. It wasn’t their problem at the time, it is now.”

Macdonald’s alpaca business is still unable to trade as normal as she cannot move the remaining members of her alpaca herd: “I am unable to conduct my business because people have chosen to be dishonest. I don’t care whether it’s political or not. An injustice has happened here. First to Geronimo. And now to me.”

The veterinary nurse argued the tests for bovine tuberculosis – a major killer of cattle that costs British farmers tens of millions of pounds a year – were fundamentally flawed. She said Geronimo only tested positive because he had repeatedly been primed with tuberculin, a purified protein derivative of bovine TB bacteria.

Macdonald and her supporters fought an unsuccessful four-year legal battle to avoid the New Zealand-born Geronimo being put down, calling the killing a “direct abuse of power” by the state.

She said: “You wouldn’t take your dog to your vet and expect a wrong diagnosis and then to put your dog down without any kind of evidence. To sit down with the ministers and have a frank, honest conversation about why I’m being treated like this is only fair.”

Macdonald said she still did not know “how, when, and where” Geronimo was killed. The alpaca was removed from her farm and loaded into a trailer to be euthanised, with police on the farm to ensure the operation went ahead.

At the time, Defra said initial postmortem tests had found a “number of TB-like lesions” but further tests would be carried out. Those tests failed to provide conclusive findings about the source of the animal’s bovine TB.

She has complaints lodged with the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman and the Independent Office for Police Conduct about the operation to put down the animal.

Macdonald said it was a chance for Labour to break with the past: “At the end of the day we have a new government and this is a historic problem the new government can solve. There is no reason I have been deprived of a living for the last three years.”

A Defra spokesperson said: “Our sympathies remain with all those with animals affected by this terrible disease which devastates farmers’ livelihoods. It is important to remember that infected animals can spread the disease to both animals and people before displaying clinical signs, which is why we take action quickly to limit the risk of the disease spreading.”