The plight of an alpaca named Geronimo, condemned to death by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), has pierced the hearts of thousands of people around the country. Supporters of Geronimo plan to form a human shield around him today as many more march on Downing Street demanding his life be spared.

Geronimo, who was brought from New Zealand to Gloucestershire by his owner Helen Macdonald four years ago, has twice tested positive for bovine TB (bTB). As a result, DEFRA insists he must be put down. But Macdonald argues that the tests returned false positives due to him being injected with the tuberculin protein to increase sensitivity to bTB testing, and that Geronimo is healthy. She wants him tested a third time to prove it.

Bovine TB is a disease of cattle that has spread to other animals. When cows become infected they can become weak, lose weight, suffer from chronic mastitis (an infection of the udder) and develop a cough. Infected cows may be slaughtered; 28,356 cows that had tested positive were killed in England between March 2020 and March 2021. The seriousness of the disease is not in question, but in trying to protect the beef and dairy industries from economic losses, the government has gone to war on other animals, particularly badgers.

Since 2013, over 140,000 badgers have been slaughtered as DEFRA seeks to eradicate the reservoirs of bTB in wild populations. This is despite the government’s own admission that bTB “is mainly spread into new herds through the movement of infected cattle that have not been detected.” An alternative to this massacre exists: vaccination. Vaccinating badgers, which is carried out by volunteers and a few Wildlife Trusts with the agreement of landowners, is more time-consuming and costly than simply shooting them, so it’s no surprise that DEFRA promotes culling and only pays lip service to promoting vaccination.

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Trials of a cattle vaccine are also underway, but with formal deployment of this vaccine planned for 2025, and the badger slaughter ongoing and expanding into new areas, DEFRA may well succeed at wiping out the majority of badgers before then.

The badgers and cattle are both victims here - of DEFRA’s refusal to prioritise more effective and humane measures for reducing the spread of bTB and of the meat and dairy industries. Animal agriculture is the cause of bTB; historically, it was the increased movement and growing herd sizes that caused cases of bTB to rise again after it had been brought under control in the early 1980s through movement restrictions and testing. Any contribution badgers make to the spread of the disease (which many vets and conservationists say is not significant) does not justify their slaughter. Rather, it is another indication that animal farming largely cannot co-exist with wildlife.

“There has been a great deal of focus on the case of Geronimo the alpaca last week,” Environment Secretary George Eustice wrote in the Mail on Sunday. “However, each week, on average, we have to remove more than 500 cattle from herds due to infection in England alone. Behind every one of those cases is a farmer who has suffered loss and tragedy.” These comments show the muddled thinking on the value of animal lives prevalent in the animal agriculture industry. Farmers may indeed struggle to see their infected cows slaughtered, yet they somehow cope with sending them off to slaughter to be made into food when they’re healthy.

There is one clear way to stop all of this suffering and killing, one that would protect cows, wildlife, the environment, and the climate all in one. And that is to move away from an animal-based food system as quickly as possible.

Claire Hamlett is a freelance journalist, writer and regular contributor at Surge. Based in Oxford, UK, Claire tells stories that challenge systemic exploitation of and disregard for animals and the environment and that point to a better way of doing things.

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