An alpaca owner has been left devastated after losing the fight to keep her prized animal alive.
Veterinary nurse Helen Macdonald, 47, had taken legal action in a bid to stop Geronimo being put down after the six-year-old tested positive for bovine tuberculosis (bTB).
But today the High Court dismissed Ms MacDonald’s case, ruling there was no “compelling evidence” that the decision not to retest Geronimo was unlawful.
Ms Macdonald said: "I'm all over the place. I don't know whether I'm coming or going."
The result ends Ms Macdonald's year-long campaign to prove that the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) was "relying doggedly on flawed science" in sending Geronimo to death row.
She claimed the test result was incorrect, carrying “false positive results”, and maintained Geronimo was in "strikingly good health".
In July 2018 Ms Macdonald, who runs Alpaca Power in Wickwar, South Gloucestershire, challenged Defra to allow Geronimo to be retested.
At a judicial review in March, Ms Macdonald's lawyers told the High Court there was "overwhelming evidence" the alpaca was not infected and the original test results were "not reliable".
Cathryn McGahey QC, on behalf of Ms Macdonald, said there had been three negative tests conducted on Geronimo and a vet had twice confirmed he was showing "no clinical signs" of the disease.
Geronimo tested negative for bTB twice while still in New Zealand, but later tested positive in the UK in August and December 2017.
Today, however, Justice Murray said that while the government acknowledged the test results could be false positives, the two positive results provided strong evidence "to a high degree of certainty" that Geronimo was infected.
Defra is responsible for controlling bTB, which can have devastating consequences for cattle farmers.
A spokesman for the department said: “We welcome the judge’s decision, while recognising that this is a very difficult time for Geronimo’s owner.
"Bovine TB causes devastation for farmers and rural communities, which is why we need to do everything we can to reduce the risk of the disease spreading.”
Earlier this year Ms Macdonald managed to crowdfund £10,000 in legal fees to have her case heard in the High Court.
But Geronimo, said to be worth around £30,000, is now set to be euthanized.
