Court backs farmer’s challenge to slaughter order on prize bull

Ken Jackson, of Forlorn Hope Farm in South Yorkshire, said it was “absolutely brilliant” after a judge gave the go-ahead for one last attempt to save the life of Hallmark Boxter, also known as Boxy.

Mr Jackson said at the High Court in London: “Boxy lives to fight another day.”

The farmer disputes the validity of the tuberculosis test that condemned his “unique and irreplaceable” showground champion and has been fighting over several months for a re-test, offering personally to pay for it.

A positive blood sample was taken from the bull in April last year and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) ordered him to be slaughtered.

Mr Jackson, whose farm is at Stubbs Walden, north of Doncaster, and 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.

Yesterday Deputy High Court judge Rabinder Singh QC ruled the farmer 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 monetary terms”.

Mr Jackson’s daughter, Kate McNeil, who has shown the bull at showgrounds around the country, said: “We just don’t believe the test was carried out correctly, according to Defra policy.

“If Boxter turned out to be positive, he would be taken to slaughter just like any other infected animal.”

Julie Anderson, for Defra, had argued “there was no evidence whatsoever” that the positive blood sample had been contaminated.