11th hour reprieve for champion bull Hallmark Boxter

A judge ordered Hallmark Boxter, also known as "Boxy", to be spared while farmer Ken Jackson, of Forlorn Hope Farm, makes one last legal bid to block the death sentence.

Mr Jackson disputes the validity of the TB 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.

He has obtained evidence from Professor Paul Torgerson that suggests the sample cannot be relied upon because of the danger that it was contaminated.

The bull, one of the most valuable British Blonde bulls in the country, remains in isolation.

A bTB alert arose on the farm after a bought-in beef heifer was found to be a carrier.

The vets then condemned six more animals, including the bull, because there were grounds for suspicion that they, too, had been exposed.

The High Court heard today there was currently no evidence of bTB in the rest of Mr Jackson's herd.

Hallmark Boxter was first scheduled for slaughter on August 26 last year, but two days before the deadline Mr Jackson obtained an interim injunction to save him and made the first application for permission to seek judicial review.

Last October, a High Court judge refused permission and discharged the injunction.

Mr Jackson indicated that he was considering renewing his application.

On November 3 a Defra solicitor emailed his solicitors, saying: "If reconsideration is sought then my client will agree not to enforce slaughter until after final determination."

Five days later Mr Jackson did renew his application.

But, on December 31 last year, Defra wrote saying Hallmark Boxter would be collected and slaughtered tomorrow (January 19).

Defra officials said they had changed their position because Mr Jackson had failed to obtain an expedited hearing of his application.

But today Mr Justice Calvert Smith, sitting at the High Court in London, ruled the November 3 email could not be read as suggesting Defra had given its undertaking on the basis expedition was applied for.

He ruled that Mr Jackson should have an opportunity to apply for judicial review within the next 21 days.

Daniel Stilitz QC, appearing for the farmer, said it was an unusual case, and it was not being suggested that re-tests should become routine in bTB cases.

"Rushing headlong into slaughter undermines the (testing) regime rather than giving it credibility," he argued.

Julie Anderson, appearing for Defra, said there was concern over the "inordinate amount of time" it was taking to decide the bull's fate.

As a matter of EU law, once an animal had tested positive, it must be slaughtered and could not be saved by a re-test.

Ms Anderson said: "It is very important this bull is slaughtered. There is a disease risk.

"That risk is being contained but no one is suggesting it is eliminated."