Shambo taken for slaughter

Updated 09.05 Fri Jul 27 2007

Keywords: Wales, Skanda Vale, Hindu, Shambo

The long battle to save Shambo the holy bull is over after the six-year-old Fresian was taken for slaughter.

Animal health officials and police took him from the Skanda Vale religious community in Wales on Thursday after a day-long stand-off.

Police had to physically remove some Hindu worshippers who spent the day praying and chanting on the ground around Shambo's pen

They were forced to obtain a court warrant after earlier being refused entry by monks.

Police had to physically remove some Hindu worshippers who spent the day praying and chanting on the ground around Shambo's pen.

Monks, who lost a legal campaign to save Shambo at the Court of Appeal this week, said their temple had been "desecrated".

The Welsh Assembly Government wanted Shambo put down after it tested positive for bovine tuberculosis three-months-ago.

Shambo was put on a trailer at Skanda Vale, in Carmarthenshire, at about 7.30pm.

Earlier, one of the worshippers, 65-year-old Verena Blum, said: "It's bad, but I don't blame the police because they were friendly and they did their duty. There is no way that you desecrate a temple in that way."

Cows are sacred to Hindus and more than 20,000 people signed a petition to save Shambo.

The monks constructed a special shrine to the bull within their main temple and insisted that the animal wass healthy and that its slaughter would be "an appalling desecration of life".

The National Farmers Union in Wales says no bull should be exempt from the strict rules designed to stop the spread of bovine TB.