Animal Passions

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HLS says the research it carries out is crucial to developing a range of new medicines that may ease the suffering of millions, as well as safer chemicals for use in agricultural and industrial products. "If you believe that what you do is essential work, important in protecting people and the environment," says Andrew Gay, the company's marketing director, "you don't get a much more ethical business than ours. In fact, it would be unethical to not do what we do."

Since 1999, HLS has been pounded by a group called SHAC, or Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, formed in November 1999 with one aim: to close down HLS. The group has identified and harassed HLS executives, employees, shareholders, suppliers and partners through telephone, fax and e-mail onslaughts. The SHAC attackers scream "murderer," "pervert" and "torturer" during demonstrations outside HLS's gates. They beat drums and screech on plastic whistles at "home demos" (protests outside the residences of company directors and employees). They mount "invasions" of firms doing business with HLS and industry conferences attended by representatives of HLS and its affiliates.

In early 2002, in an attempt to protect the identity of its shareholders, HLS moved its headquarters — on paper — to the U.S. But this hasn't helped. Since then, HLS has lost numerous business associates, including banks and insurers that stopped doing business with the company because they were tired of the aggravation and fearful for their own workers' safety. HLS board members, too, have stepped down. "We will do our utmost to protect the safety of these people," says Brian Cass, HLS's managing director. But Cass himself was beaten outside his home by masked men in 2001. One man, not connected with SHAC, jailed in the attack was a longtime animal-rights extremist.

HLS has been in business since 1952, but it became notorious much later — on March 26, 1997, to be precise. That's when It's a Dog's Life — an undercover documentary shot inside HLS's canine toxicology laboratory by a video journalist who worked there as a technician for 64 days — was screened on British television. The footage showed beagle puppies being overdosed, young dogs being hit and shaken for wiggling during blood tests, and animals repeatedly poked with needles when their tiny veins proved difficult to locate. HLS came under intense fire from shocked viewers, and the company acknowledged serious mistakes. Three people were fired. Two pleaded guilty to cruelty to animals. The company's share price dropped and clients took their business elsewhere. "The people who were most upset were the people here at Huntingdon, their co-workers," says Cass, who joined the company in September 1998. New policies, training and staff were introduced, he said, "to create a more open, transparent environment so things like that would never happen again." None of it placated the activists, who say they won't rest until they sink HLS for good. "You can't negotiate when lives are being lost," says SHAC spokesman Greg Avery. "The only way you can stop evil is to hit it head on." But many HLS employees "never even see an animal" in their work, retorts Gay. Half of the company's contracted research is in nonanimal-related chemistries. Roughly one-eighth of the work, Gay adds, is in the kind of alternatives that animal-rights groups encourage — in-vitro experimentation and computer modeling. While HLS officials say they've become immune over the years to much of the intimidation and abuse, they refer to some SHAC activists as "loonies" who are "comparable to football hooligans." Lynn Sawyer, a midwife and SHAC activist, finds such characterizations laughable. "I've never met as many nurses and teachers and social workers and people who work in public health care as I have in the animal-rights movement," she says.

The most serious illegal actions against people and property — including the "liberation" of animals from breeding farms — are carried out anonymously, often under such flags of convenience as the Animal Liberation Front, the Animal Rights Militia or the Justice Department. Colin Blakemore, a professor of physiology at the University of Oxford whose medical research has relied on animal tests, was among several scientists threatened with assassination several years ago. Crude devices intended to injure have been sent to his home and office. The violence of a tiny fraction of animal-rights campaigners has stirred alarm even among fellow activists, who say it diverts attention from the real debate.