POLICE and health officials on Thursday (June 20) swooped on Exmoor farmer Michael Reed to seize a cow diagnosed with TB which he had been protecting.

The cow gave birth to a calf on Mr Reed’s Higher Ranscombe farm, near Wootton Courtenay, three days after it had returned a positive TB test.

Mr Reed said he would barricade his farm if necessary to stop the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) taking the cow away for slaughter.

He feared the nine-week-old calf would die without its mother and wanted to allow it to suckle for at least four months.

But on Thursday the cow, which Mr Reed had isolated from the rest of his 45-strong herd, was seized when two police officers escorted health and trading standards officials and a lorry driver and arrived on the farm without notice.

Mr Reed said: “They just suddenly turned up and took the cow away. It was soul destroying.

“It was sudden, all at once without any notice, but there you are, authority is authority I suppose.

“The cow, she was in the river, and the calf was under the hedge.

“You do not know what they feel. There is a bond between mother and calf like between a woman and a child in most cases.”

Mr Reed said the calf had now been put in an orchard with a second calf in the hope that he could wean it, because it was almost impossible to encourage another cow to suckle it.

He said: “Sad to say, if it dies, it dies, I am afraid.”

Mr Reed said he would continue to campaign for the regulations to be changed to allow a cow in isolation to continue suckling her calf for at least four months, which would give the young animal a chance of survival.

He also remained suspicious of the TB test, because of a lack of symptoms displayed in the animal officials said was infected.

Mr Reed, aged 72, has farmed all his life at Ranscombe, taking over from his parents John Reed and Betty Reed (nee Webber), who moved there in 1947.