Animal rights protestors will be joined by alpacas while marching on Downing Street on 9 August 2021, in an attempt to save fellow alpaca Geronimo from being put down. The eight year old mammal has tested positive twice for bovine tuberculosis (“bTB”), leading the UK Government to demand he be euthanised.

However, his owner, Helen Macdonald, believes the tests have returned false positives and is urging the Department of Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (“DEFRA”) to have him checked a third time, having failed in her High Court action challenging the refusal to allow the animal to be re-tested again.

The stud had tested negative for bTB in New Zealand bit when Ms. Macdonald agreed to a voluntary test as part of national surveillance of the disease, the result came back positive. DEFRA decided to conduct a second test in November 2017, which also came back positive and ordered Geronimo to be put down.

In 2019, Ms. Macdonald challenged the environment secretary’s refusal to allow the animal to be re-tested again. But after losing her High Court appeal, a district judge signed an “execution warrant” in May 2021. Ms. Macdonald’s appeal against the warrant was also rejected at the High Court. Ruling on the animal’s fate, Mr. Justice Griffiths said he has a “great degree of sympathy for her” but stressed the need to protect against the “serious consequences of bTB”.

Later on Monday 9 August, protesters will begin marching from Defra's headquarters at Smith Square in Westminster at 2pm, before heading to the gates of Downing Street. The demonstration is being organised by members of the Born Free Foundation, the Alpaca Society, and practicing vet and bovine TB policy expert Dr Iain McGill.

Protesters will be joined by a number of alpacas who have been trained to walk with people and are comfortable around crowds, the organisers said. The campaigners believe that Geronimo is free of TB and that Defra's tests are highly likely to be inaccurate. They are also demanding a different type of test be used to prove Geronimo's disease status before his death.

Speaking before the demo, Dominic Dyer, from the Born Free Foundation, said:

"Defra has known for many years that the TB skin test could be leading to false positive TB results in alpacas. "However rather than allow Geronimo to be tested for TB using a more accurate Actiphage PCR blood test, Defra Secretary George Eustice continues to order his death to avoid greater scrutiny over the many failures in the Governments bovine TB control policy in cattle, alpacas and badgers."

The protesters are calling for the prime minister to force the environment secretary to halt the killing and immediately implement the latest bovine TB tests for all suspected cases.

The outcry over Geronimo's fate prompted George Eustice, who comes from a farming background, to write an article in the Mail on Sunday about his own experiences with bovine TB.

"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," he said.

"Farmers understand that infected animals are a risk to the remainder of their herd, so while the loss of individual animals is always a tragedy, the farming communities have worked with our government vets in this arduous but necessary endeavour."

"The case of Geronimo the alpaca could well prove a major turning point in improving bovine TB control policy, in order to better protect cattle, alpacas and the future of our precious wildlife," Mr Dyer said.