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OUR MAN IN WESTMINSTER

Chris Loder, Member of Parliament for West Dorset

The story of Geronimo the alpaca has received much media attention in the last few months. An animal diagnosed with bovine tuberculosis which was required to be put down to prevent it from passing on the disease, but also from having a slow and horrible death. But I was somewhat aghast by the whole story because, to me, it exposed the flaws in the argument cited by activists. Those against the animal being taken away, ironically, are often those opposed to the badger cull, and, I would argue, unaware of the real damage these animals cause.

Now, once or twice a year, farms in and around Sherborne, indeed all over the country, have tests for the whole herd to identify if any their cows have bovine TB. Our farmers have lived in fear for years and years because if they find they have it, the cow is set to be slaughtered immediately and, in some cases, the entire herd. Having grown up on a farm, where bovine TB can, and does, have catastrophic consequences, I have seen first-hand the traumas that this can involve.

The Geronimo activists are unaware of all this, because if they really were we’d be having a proper conversation about badger culling, about the understanding of what bovine TB really is and the

devastation that TB has brought to the farming industry. Why is it OK that a cow and her unborn calf are slaughtered because of TB but not an alpaca? Why is it OK for a cow to die and not a badger? The outrage of those who want to be outraged is much more to do with the fact that Geronimo was an alpaca and not a cow – would there have been any kind of battle had a cow been at the centre of the case? Farmers across the country lose sometimes large proportions of their herds to bovine TB, and with great sadness they accept that it is necessary to kill their animals to protect the other animals in their herd from this horrible disease.

Amongst those expressing their objections to what is otherwise routine practice for thousands of cattle every year was the veteran of rural campaigns, Chris Packham. I wonder what Mr Packham has to say about the sad case of the farmer in Northern Ireland who lost his entire herd to the same disease at the same time. In fact, the BBC presenter’s campaign group has spent much time trying to stop badger culling, claiming that it is ineffective in preventing the spread of bovine TB and that it is cruel. In the 12 months to March 2021, over 28,000 cows were slaughtered as a result of bovine TB, and more than 30,000 were killed the year before for the same reason. Each and every one of those animals will have been reared and looked after by a farming family for whom every loss is a deep personal sadness. These cows did not get a second chance or court cases in their name. These cows did not have a host of TV celebrities banging the drum for them. If Geronimo had been allowed to live and eventually became responsible for an outbreak in a local herd of cattle, would there have been any kind of outrage on behalf of the cows that would have been killed? I suspect not.

Badgers are the vector of spread for bovine TB and badgers are very mobile – even if Geronimo wasn’t near any cows, the disease can be spread via badgers to farms some distance away. That is why we have licensed badger culling in this country. However, outbreaks of bovine TB trigger more badger culling, not less – if Geronimo had been responsible for an outbreak, action would need to be taken to stop it which could have meant increased culling. The public outcry over DEFRA’s decision to have Geronimo put down reveals how some people cared more about one alpaca than potentially hundreds or thousands of cows.

Caring about animal welfare is all well and good, but not if that only extends to pets or animals seen in the media. Our farm animals deserve the same amount of care as any dog, cat or alpaca which includes protecting them from the horrible realities of bovine TB. It was right to uphold the judgement on Geronimo. But the most valuable thing was that the testing process has been rigorously scrutinised. I hope it will be improved and made more robust too, but it’s another lesson for us to think more broadly outside of what appears to be the case.