Geronimo the alpaca survives another day while High Court battle is paused

Geronimo the alpaca lives to see the other day as a High Court hearing on its destruction order is paused until Wednesday afternoon

Geronimo the alpaca has been afforded a stay of execution after an urgent High Court hearing on its case was adjourned.

The animal was sentenced to death last month after twice testing positive for bovine tuberculosis, but campaigners are fighting to save its life.

Mrs Justice Stacey said on Tuesday she needs further information from Geronimo’s owner, Helen Macdonald, before deciding whether to grant a temporary injunction to halt the Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra)’s destruction order.

The hearing is set to resume on Wednesday afternoon and Geronimo’s life hangs in the balance.

If Ms Macdonald’s application is accepted, Geronimo will be allowed to live until a further hearing on whether or not its case should be reopened. If the application is unsuccessful, Defra will be allowed to euthanise the alpaca with no further appeals possible.

Ms Macdonald, who imported Geronimo from New Zealand to her farm in Gloucestershire in 2017, insists that the bovine TB tests her animal was subject to rendered false positives.

She claims, along with other alpaca farmers and animal welfare campaigners, that the Enferplex tests used to detect bovine TB can easily show false positives because of the tuberculin primer injected into the skin before the test.

Defra, meanwhile, say that the possibility of a false positive is just 0.34 per cent.

The government agency was granted the destruction order after Ms Macdonald lost a High Court battle aimed at preventing Geronimo’s death.

They were initially given a 30 day window to kill the animal beginning on 5 August, but further legal battles have so far prevented this from happening.

Geronimo’s case has attracted significant attention, with more than 130,000 people signing a petition to save the animal.

But while Defra say they are “sympathetic” to Ms Macdonald, they insist that their destruction order passed “thorough legal scrutiny”.

A spokesperson said: “We are sympathetic to Ms Macdonald’s situation, just as we are with everyone with animals affected by this terrible disease.

“It is for this reason that the testing results and options for Geronimo have been very carefully considered by Defra, the Animal and Plant Health Agency and its veterinary experts, as well as passing several stages of thorough legal scrutiny.”