High Court judge quashes bull’s slaughter order

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• Charles Henry | 14 April 2011 5:17 pm

  By DAVID WILKES Last updated at 9:01 PM on 26th January 2011
  By DAVID WILKES Last updated at 9:01 PM on 26th January 2011. Daily Mail.
  
  Down on Forlorn Hope Farm, things might just be looking up at last for Boxster the champion bull.
  
  Confined to quarantine for ten months, he has been living alone in an isolation paddock surrounded by two fences, one electric and one spiked. To give him a friendly scratch, his owner has to use a stick and then dip it in disinfectant.
  
  'It's heartbreaking,' said farmer Ken Jackson, 66, of the plight of his beloved ton-and-a-quarter animal, which has won dozens of best-in-show rosettes and is worth £20,000.
  
  TB or not TB? Boxster the prize bull has already avoided one appointment at the slaughterhouse
  TB or not TB? Boxster the prize bull has already avoided one appointment at the slaughterhouse
  
  'It is hard to believe an animal which looks so fine has got anything wrong with him.
  
  So what is the cause of this beastly agricultural tragedy? Well, with apologies to Shakespeare, TB or not TB, that is the question.
  
  Boxy, as his owners call him, was deemed to have bovine tuberculosis during routine tests at the farm in Stubbs Walden, near Doncaster, South Yorkshire, in April last year and condemned to slaughter.
  
  Ever since then the four-year-old pedigree British Blonde has been at the centre of wrangling between Mr Jackson and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and kept in quarantine after being given a stay of execution while the unusal - and hugely costly - legal battle is waged over his future.
  
  The latest twist in the case came yesterday at the High Court in London when Mr Jackson won permission to challenge the decision to slaughter Boxster (or Hallmark Boxster, to use his full pedigree name) as a judge granted his application to seek a judicial review.
  
  Afterwards Mr Jackson, who had sat listening intently through the two hour hearing with his shirt sleeves rolled up and wearing a tie emblazoned with a bull motif, declared: 'It's absolutely brilliant. Boxy lives to fight another day.'
  
  Less likely to be celebrating, however, are taxpayers.
  
  After three court hearings already and a further day and half to come for the jucidical review, it is estimated Defra will by the end of it have spent £50,000 fighting the case - which, claims Mr Jackson, they could have avoided if they'd only agreed to re-test Boxy, something he even offered personally to pay for.
  
  'Let's put it this way, my legal bills are a lot more than Boxster is worth,' Mr Jackson said.
  
  'God knows how much Defra's are.
  
  'We were devastated when Boxster failed the test but I believe the results were unreliable. Ten months later we are still here. We should be standing together with Defra, not at logger heads.
  
  'They are wasting thousands upon thousands of taxpayers money on this. I don't want to give up. I have a right to right for my family business, my livelihood.'
  
  The TB alert on the farm arose after a bought-in beef heifer was found to be a carrier. The vets then condemned six more animals, including Boxster, because there were grounds for suspicion that they, too, had been exposed.
  
  He was first scheduled for slaughter on August 26 last year after talks to save him failed. But two days before the deadline Mr Jackson obtained an interim injunction to save him.
  
  The High Court heard there is currently no evidence of TB in the rest of Mr Jackson's herd.
  
  The dispute centres on a blood sample taken from Boxster. Mr Jackson, whose farm is humorously named after an old battle site, argues the officers who took the sample mixed two half-full vials in the field, contrary to written procedures. He wants the positive test declared null and void by the courts.
  
  In a statement to the court, father of two Mr Jackson described how Boxster was not only 'something of a star on the show circuit' but also outstanding as a stock bull and crucial to the development of his herd. There was no guarantee another animal could be found to replace him 'given the chemistry of Boxster and the herd on the farm'.
  
  But Defra maintain that, under EU law, once an animal has tested positive, it must be slaughtered and cannot be saved by a retest.
  
  Barrister Julie Anderson, representing Defra, told the court yesterday the department was 'unhappy and concerned' that the bull had still not been slaughtered as he posed a disease threat.
  
  She argued 'there was no evidence whatsoever' that the positive blood sample had been contaminated, adding that Defra was not being 'high-handed'. But it was now 'far too late' to conduct an effective fresh test and it was impossible to prove the bull was free of TB.
  
  Deputy High Court judge Rabinder Singh QC ruled Mr Jackson had 'an arguable case' and ordered that his bid to overturn the bull's death sentence should be heard at the court as a matter of urgency.
  
  The judge said: 'This bull is a much-loved animal. He is a prize animal and it would appear that his value to these claimants is not simply to be assessed in montetary terms.'
  
  After the ruling, Mr Jackson's daughter, Kate McNeil, who has shown Boxster at showgrounds across the country and accompanied her father to court with his wife Anita, 65, said: 'We just don't believe the test was carried out correctly, according to Defra policy, and therefore we feel the result cannot be valid.
  
  'If Boxster turned out to be positive, he would be taken to slaughter just like any other infected animal.'
  
  Meanwhile, it emerged that even being in quarantine has not stopped Boxster's winnng ways. Mr Jackson said last summer he won the North of England best stock bull for his class - after the judges came to inspect him in his isolation pen.
  
  Last night a Defra spokesman said: 'Bovine TB is having a devastating effect on many farms and farm businesses, so we must have strict measures to control it.
  
  'Our overriding concern must be the containment of disease and the protection of neighbouring cattle herds and local wildlife from infection with bovine TB. We are committed to preserving the bovine TB status of a part of the country where the disease is not endemic.
  
  'It is regrettable that this case is taking so long to resolve. However, it would be inappropriate to comment on the case until a final decision has been reached.'
  
  The stupid bxxxxxxs just wouldn't retest him. . YOU COULDN'T MAKE IT UP!!!
  
  HEADS MUST ROLL AT DEFRA!!!!

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• Charles Henry | 14 April 2011 5:24 pm

  "Barrister Julie Anderson, representing Defra, told the court yesterday the department was 'unhappy and concerned' that the bull had still not been slaughtered as he posed a disease threat."
  
  BUT WHAT ABOUT ALL THE BxxxxY BADGERS??

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• mechanical mike | 14 April 2011 5:55 pm

  Calm down Charles its only a cock up by DEFRA did you note the EU (again) says you cant retest why not? best of 3 Id say.

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• Charles Henry | 14 April 2011 6:25 pm

  Calm down Mike! . Calm down! . I'm bloody livid! . . DEFRA still think money grows on trees! . The idea that you can't retest a prize winning bull just defies belief. . And no it's not a cock up; it's DEFRA so far up themselves, they just can't see their blind incompetence for the Left Wing, PC mud in their eyes. . I wouldn't trust these morons to take a corpse' blood pressure!

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• Newt | 14 April 2011 6:32 pm

  Congratulations to the Jackson family I know how hard this must have been to you.
  
  There is no mention here of the extra costs that the Jackson's have had to find keeping the bull in these conditions, the loss of earning through not being able to use him or any real compensation for the stress both to the family and the bull that all this has caused.
  For those who laugh at "stress to the bull" he has been in isolation, that is very stressful for any herd animal. Anyone who considers themselves to care about animals, that is a vallid point of view.

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• stumpjumper | 14 April 2011 6:34 pm

  The result should stand. We CAN NOT afford to let over emotional farmers have gamma reactors retested just because they do not like the result. If this was a commercial beast we would not be having this conversation. But that's table valuations for you. The bull should go. STOP wasting tax payers money on this. & yes Charles - Let's address the disease reservoir in the wild life. Let's spend our time and money on progressive action. I hope that this bull has been kept in 'isolation' & in a 'secure' inside pen for the last 12 months, away from our friend 'the badger' or Yorkshire could have a even bigger problem on it's hands!

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• Charles Henry | 14 April 2011 6:58 pm

  @stumpjumper; if you knew anything at all now totally discredited Gamma Interferon blood test; instead of running over at the mouth, you'd crawl back in your hole. . This bull has been kept in total isolation. . And if you can read you will see the farmer rven offered to pay for a retest himself. . Do me a favour 'the peasant' will you? . Explain to this misanthrope how the Gamma Interferon can't distinguish between M.bovis and MAC; the Mycobacterium avium complex of bacteria before I get really angry.

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• stumpjumper | 14 April 2011 7:22 pm

  Total isolation? Pest proof fences? Enough to satisfy a fellow farmer that the wildlife has not been put at risk? The photos across the media beg to differ. I am FULLY aware of the Gamma interferon's virtues & I am FULLY aware of the different OPINIONS on this. I am FULLY aware of all the testing procedures of both skin & blood. But I stand by my point. What we do need is consistency across the board. We do not want to be in a situation where some farmers that dislike like a result challenge for a retest. It makes a mockery of the whole situation.
  
  One thing to remember & it is a common occurrence on these types of things - we are all human in this thread and asking a total stranger (fellow farmer?) to crawl back in to their hole (just as an example) isn't actually a very graceful thing to say.
  
  I am happy to participate later, but I've got lambing sheep look .

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• Charles Henry | 14 April 2011 7:58 pm

  Put your name stumpjumper; . Not some pseudonym that suggests you are just a Defra stooge. . And you clearly have no real understanding of the epidemiology of these bacterium. . Until you do you are wasting your time and mine on these pages. . And these are not OPINIONS, they are facts. . You are obviously just a badger lover who keeps sheep. . "Enough to satisfy a fellow farmer that the wildlife has not been put at risk?" . You really haven't got a clue have you about M.bovis have you. . Watch this film will you and start learning.
  
  http://www.bovinetb.info/videos/a_way_forward/index.php

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• Charles Henry | 14 April 2011 8:46 pm

  From a letter in 2009.
  
  "It will come as no surprise to the majority of those vets and farmers involved with Bovine tuberculosis(bTB), that the majority of cattle more recently sentenced to death by the now totally discredited Gamma Interferon blood testing regime, were not only clinically healthy, but showed no sign of disease whatsoever at post-mortem. . The key to the efficacy of this test is its sensitivity and specificity. . It was tested to be used ALONGSIDE the skin test, and certainly not instead of it. The skin test is now universally accepted as the only effective test for use in cattle and deer and other livestock.
  
  (though it has proved ineffective for alpaca)
  
  There are very many different Mycobacterium in the environment with different strains of each, and clearly the Gamma Interferon blood test is unable to distinguish between them all, whether they be harmful to the host animal or not."
  ............................................................................
  "Tuberculosis has a different manifestation in most species . In the badger it is fundamentally different from TB in cattle essentially due to the lack of development of a hypersensitivity response which is a prime feature of infection in cattle. Thus small numbers of organisms infecting cattle produce a vigorous cellular response which results in extensive cell death and the development of large cold abscesses in the affected tissues usually the lung and
  respiratory lymph nodes . This is in fact the host immune reaction to TB. Whilst causing disease and disruption to the affected organs the changes inside these abscesses strongly inhibit the TB bacteria and kill many of them."
  
  Dr John Gallagher, a veterinary pathologist since 1972
  

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