The owner of Defra-slaughtered alpaca Geronimo has made a direct plea to the Prime Minister on the third anniversary of the animal’s death.
Helen Macdonald, 53, called for Sir Kier and the Government to reveal “the truth” behind what happened to her beloved animal.
Macdonald said Geronimo’s death remains a mystery and worries he was strangled by the rope around his neck.
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The eight-year-old alpaca was killed on August 31 2021 after testing twice testing positive for Bovine TB and following a four-year battle to save him.
(Image: SWNS)
Macdonald believes that the testing were flawed and at the results were false positives.
Although the alpaca was dragged to his death three years ago, Macdonald says she is no closer to getting “justice for Geronimo”.
She has now called on the government to give her the answers she wants and to lift the restrictions on her surviving pedigree alpaca herd.
(Image: SWNS)
She said: “As a direct result of the abuse inflicted by Defra for the last seven years, including the false claims made publicly by senior Defra officials since 2021, there has been no closure for us as a family or a community.
“Geronimo’s companions remain in their isolation unit today because Defra refuse to behave in a professional, honest, evidence-based manner.
“Not only have we lost Geronimo, our business has experienced significant financial losses due to movement restrictions caused by Defra’s abuse of its own documented procedures since the negative tissue culture result of December 2021.”
(Image: Tom Wren / SWNS)
She added that her herd have the “highest health status” and “exemplary biosecurity”, yet she still can’t trade because of the action taken by Defra, which says “feels like a direct abuse of power”.
She went on: “How can the Government behave like this towards its farmers? These are unjustifiable and unreasonable acts of cruelty.”
Witnesses say Geronimo was taken into a horsebox and driven away under police escort in the presence of around 15 police officers at Wickwar, Gloucestershire. A post mortem found no trace of Bovine TB in Geronimo.
(Image: Tom Maddick SWNS)
Macdonald said she had been left distraught over what she called a lack of transparancy from Defra who she claimed had refused to disclose any information regarding Geronimo’s death.
She hopes to meet with Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, and Farming minster, Daniel Zeichner.
She said: “There must be an immediate end to the abuse that we are still suffering unjustifiably.”
The WeAreGeronimo campaign group is also continuing to push for Geronimo’s Law, which supports transparent, fair and evidence-based science for all species in the UK.
(Image: Getty Images)
A Defra spokesperson previously 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.”
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.”
They added that Defra has worked constructively to provide objective evidence to support the Ombudsman’s investigation into this complaint about the removal of a TB test positive alpaca back in 2021 and added that they await the findings of their final report.
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