Animal rights versus commercial freedom

The UK's Home Secretary, Jack Straw, yesterday condemned the actions of "those who use violence and intimidation to disrupt the running of vital biotechnology businesses." And he confirmed a special payment of £1 million to Cambridgeshire Police to help with the additional costs of policing protests at Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), one of Britain's main commercial animal research centres. Employees are said to have been intimidated both at HLS and in their own homes. And protestors are also trying to undermine the financial position of the company, by lobbying financial institutions to withdraw loans to HLS. The company has been attempting to extend the duration of bank loans to give time to complete a refinancing package and, according to news reports this week, these protests have placed the whole future of HLS in jeopardy. But asked by BioMed Central if HLS was under threat of closure, a spokeswoman said "absolutely not." A printed statement from HLS said, "the company has noted press speculation concerning refinancing of its bank facilities. The company continues discussions with interested parties with a view to refinancing these facilities … A further announcement will be made in due course." And the spokeswoman added: "Legally we are not allowed to say at the moment what's happening. It's all speculation."But the speculation was quite enough to prompt Lord Sainsbury, the UK's Science Minister, to warn on Monday that if HLS was closed, other firms could take their research abroad. "Some jobs would go abroad and some pharmaceutical companies would say 'we're not going to put our research facilities in the UK'," he said. "We have very strong laws about the safety of drugs and that means that experiments do have to take place." Then on Tuesday, HLS managing director Brian Cass claimed that although the HLS is a relatively small company, "an attack on us is an attack on the whole pharmaceutical industry," and called on the government to do more to stop violent activists. On the same day, Prime Minister Tony Blair's official spokesman was reported as saying "The prime minister is very pro-science in relation to this … There is a very big difference between lawful protest, which we support, and intimidation, thuggery and violence which we don't." And Jack Straw underlined this view. "We are absolutely determined to tackle these so-called animal rights protestors, many of whom do not hesitate to use violence and intimidation to achieve their aims. It is wholly unacceptable for this small minority to attempt to stop individuals and businesses going about their legitimate business," Mr Straw said. Options said to be under consideration for later addition to the forthcoming Criminal Justice Bill are legislation specifically designed to outlaw protests outside individuals' homes, and the sending of threatening mail to intimidate staff. In a further development in the High Court last week, Uncaged Campaigns, an organization that told BioMed Central that it encourages only legitimate non-violent protest against animal experiments, lost an appeal against an injunction forbidding it to distribute certain alleged HLS documents. The documents, Uncaged claim, reveal serious malpractice at the company in relation to experiments on a Novartis immunosuppressant, involving the transplantation of pig hearts into monkeys. Uncaged lost its appeal against the injunction forbidding further distribution of the documents - which had been the subject of graphic revelations in the Daily Express newspaper. According to the latest figures from the Home Office Animals (Scientific Procedures) Inspectorate, total animal usage in the UK has declined steadily since the mid-1970s. In 1998, some 2.66 million scientific procedures were performed on living animals in Great Britain. Of these, 60% used mice and 22% rats. Fish and birds were each used in just under 5% of procedures, rabbits in 1.4%, dogs in less than 0.3%, monkeys in less than 0.2% and cats in about 0.05%. Just under half of all procedures were carried out in commercial establishments, mainly the pharmaceutical industry, and the remainder in academic, medical or publicly funded establishments. The Inspectorate reports that 52% of all procedures in 1998 were for medical or veterinary research, drug development or pharmaceutical safety testing; 34% for fundamental studies in the biomedical or biological sciences; and about 6% for the safety testing of non-pharmaceutical products for worker, consumer or environmental protection. These patterns of animal usage are fairly similar from year to year, the Inspectorate says.On Monday, shares in HLS — which had stood at 113p in March 1997 — fell one penny to 1.5p. In response to the voiced Government support, on Wednesday the shares stood 2.5 pence up at 5.25p.It remains to be seen whether HLS can survive, but the government seems determined to limit further damage to the UK's reputation as a centre for biomedical research.

Animal rights versus commercial freedom

The fate of a small animal research company has prompted the UK Government to consider new legislation "to deal with animal rights extremists."

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