Helen MacDonald called Geronimo her blessing and great joy. The results of the opening of the alpaca named Geronimo did not confirm that the animal had bovine tuberculosis (bTB) during its lifetime, although it was euthanized on August 31st of this year due to this diagnosis. British authorities were concerned that the alpaca was the cause of the spread of the disease, and a court order was issued for its euthanasia. Many people in Britain and beyond followed Geronimo’s fate.
His owner, Helen Macdonald, waged a years-long campaign to save her pet, insisting on the dubiousness of the testing method that showed the presence of tuberculosis in the alpaca. Hundreds of thousands of British people signed a petition to save the alpaca. MacDonald has filed several lawsuits in the High Court and, after losing the case, promised to seek a necropsy of Geronimo for future justice for other animals.
“We have finally received the full results of the autopsy and it is obvious that this animal did not have tuberculosis,” said one of the campaigners to save Jeronimo, Dominic Dyer. “Poor Jeronimo has been killed for nothing, in the most cruel and disgusting way, in front of the world’s press.” “Today is a very sad day. So far, nothing in Jerome’s analysis confirms that he was infected,” said Dr. Ian McGill, a veterinarian who reviewed the initial findings of the Autopsy Commission. “We always had doubts about the accuracy of the original diagnosis, and unfortunately we expected something like this.
McDonald’s (left) has been fighting for its pet for several years with the support of hundreds of thousands of people in the UK and around the world. Veterinarians representing the government say the results of the latest tests are not conclusive. According to them, the controversial data does not negate the fact that the animal could have had tuberculosis during its lifetime. In addition, they say there are signs of tuberculosis tissue damage in the analysis. Experts who have sided with Helen MacDonald state that there are no direct signs of damage to the alpacas in postmortem analyses. McDonald’s attorneys have prepared a statement saying that the diagnosis of the alpaca that led to its death was incorrect. McDonald herself has not yet commented on the recent events. The Chief Veterinary Officer for the UK, Christine Middlemiss, expressed her sympathy to Helen MacDonald and all pet owners whose pets have fallen victim to such a terrible disease.
Helen MacDonald brought Jeronimo to England from New Zealand in August 2017, and the animal has been at her farm in Wickwar, near Bristol, ever since. In November of that year, the animal tested positive twice for tuberculosis. During the ensuing years of litigation, Helen MacDonald – herself a trained veterinary nurse – insisted that the test results showing the presence of tuberculosis in Geronimo could not be considered accurate because of the sampling mechanism. She pointed out that the Enferplex test first injects the animal with tuberculin – extracts of proteins derived from tuberculosis-causing mycobacteria – which was the reason for the positive result.
Geronimo’s case became so sensational that the animal had to be removed from the farm under police escort. Dozens of people came to Helen Macdonald’s property to prevent the authorities from taking the alpaca. She also stated that since arriving in the UK, the alpaca Geronimo has been on her farm without contact with other animals and does not pose an epidemiological threat. The British authorities believed that the animal had arrived from New Zealand already infected and could be the cause of the spread of a disease capable of becoming a catastrophe for the country’s agriculture. On August 31, 2021, employees of the Department of Food, Environment and Rural Areas transported an animal from a farm under police escort and euthanized an alpaca on the same day.
