Shambo

Shambo (c. 2001 – 26 July 2007) was a black Friesian bull living in the interfaith Skanda Vale Temple near Llanpumsaint in Wales who had been adopted by the local Hindu community as a sacred animal. He came to public attention in April 2007, when a routine skin test for bovine tuberculosis (Mycobacterium bovis) tested positive, indicating he may have been in contact with the bacterium that causes the disease. As a result, the Welsh Government required that the bull be slaughtered. Skanda Vale disputed this and campaigned for a reprieve, expressing their belief that the sanctity of all life is the cornerstone of Hinduism. They were backed in this stance by the Hindu religious community at large. Farmers supported the Welsh Government's policy that cattle which tested positive to the skin test be destroyed in the interests of other local cattle.

On 15 July 2007, Deputy High Court judge Gary Hickinbottom ruled that slaughtering Shambo would be unlawful, since the two slaughter orders had failed to give enough weight to the rights of the monks, and that killing Shambo would violate the human rights of the Skanda Vale community, which had a right to "manifest" its religious faith, according to Article 9 of the European Convention on Human Rights ("right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion"). A spokesman for the Farmers' Union of Wales called the ruling "ludicrous", arguing that it "contradicts the principles upon which successful TB eradication programmes throughout the world have been based for generations."^[1] On 23 July 2007, the Court of Appeal upheld the Welsh Assembly Government's appeal. Lord Justice Pill said former rural affairs minister Jane Davidson acted lawfully when she refused to make an exception for Shambo as a sacred bull.^[2] A postmortem subsequently revealed that Shambo had lesions 'typical of TB'.