Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is a contract animal-testing company founded in 1952 in England, now with facilities in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire and Eye, Suffolk in the UK; New Jersey in the U.S.; and in Japan. The largest such commercial operation in Europe, with 1700 staff.^[1] HLS conducts tests on around 75,000 animals every year — including rats, rabbits, pigs, dogs, and primates^[2] — testing pharmaceutical products, agricultural chemicals, industrial chemicals, and foodstuffs on behalf of private clients worldwide.^[3]

Huntingdon has been under intense financial pressure since 1999, when a group of British animal rights activists set up Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), an international campaign to close the company down. The campaign was started after film shot secretly inside Huntingdon, and shown on British television, showed staff punching and laughing at the animals in their care.^[4] Since then the company has suffered a severe financial downturn and several of its staff and customers have been subject to direct action that has sometimes been illegal and even violent. Financial figures released by the company in 2007 report a 5 percent increase in gross profits of $50 million on revenues of $190 million, leading managing director Brian Cass to plead to the financial services industry to stop treating Huntingdon as "radioactive."^[5]

[edit] History

Originally the company concentrated on nutrition, veterinary and biochemical research. An expansion of services in the late 1950s led to the testing of pharmaceuticals, crop protection products, food additives and a variety of industrial and consumer chemicals. This set the company on its present path to becoming a leading provider of toxicology testing.

HLS's managing director, Brian Cass, was awarded the CBE in 2002 for services to medical research and in May 2003, the company was accredited by the Association For Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care (AAALAC).^[6]

[edit] Controversy

A dog in Huntingdon Life Sciences.

A protest march in Huntingdon by SHAC, November 10, 2007.

Huntingdon is criticised by animal rights and animal welfare groups for documented instances of animal abuse and for the wide range of substances it tests on animals, particularly non-medical products.

The company's labs have been infiltrated by undercover animal rights activists several times since the 1980s. In 1997, film secretly recorded inside HLS in the UK by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) showed serious breaches of animal-protection laws, including a beagle puppy being held up by the scruff of the neck and repeatedly punched in the face, and animals being taunted. The investigation led to the company's Home Office licence being revoked in April 1997 for six months. At the time, the company's shares stood at £1.13: within three years they were worth 2.5 pence. Huntingdon officials said that the breaches were isolated cases.^[7]

On July 24, 1997, Home Office minister George Howarth told the House of Commons: "Shortcomings relating to the care, treatment and handling of animals, and delegation of health checking to new staff of undetermined competence, demonstrate that the establishment was not appropriately staffed and that animals were not at all times provided with adequate care." The laboratory technicians responsible were suspended from HLS the day after the film was broadcast on Channel 4 television as "It's a Dog's Life". All three were later sacked.^[8] Two of the men seen hitting and shaking dogs were found guilty under the Animals Act of 1911 of "cruelly terrifying dogs." It was the first time laboratory technicians had been prosecuted for animal cruelty in the UK.^[4] HLS admitted that the technicians behaviour was deplorable and a new management team was introduced the following year which, according to The Daily Telegraph, "introduced greater openness and new training methods." ^[8]

Since then, the company's labs have been accused by animal rights supporters of a similar offence in the United States. In 1998, an undercover investigator for PETA used a camera hidden in her glasses to make 50 hours of videotape of the HLS laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. She also made four 90-minute audiotapes, photocopied 8,000 company documents, and copied the company's client list. Some of the film she shot showed a monkey being dissected while still alive and, according to PETA, conscious. The president of HLS in New Jersey, Alan Staple, said the monkey was alive but sedated during the dissection.^[9]

According to Tony Blair's office while he was prime minister, he was a supporter of HLS — a spokesman called him "very pro-science in relation to this"^[10] — although HLS's MD Brian Cass reportedly referred to Blair as a "bastard"^[11] and argued that if their research is stopped in Britain, it may be moved elsewhere, to a country with less rigorous animal-protection legislation and with a loss of British jobs. Soon after, Cass credits Blair and Lord Sainsbury with making the decision to tackle animal rights extremism in Britain.^[8]

[edit] Protests and intimidation

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The Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, (SHAC) campaign is based in the UK and U.S., and aims to close the company down. According to its website, the campaign's methods are restricted to non-violent “direct action”, as well as lobbying and demonstrations. It targets not only HLS itself, but any company, institution, or person doing business with the laboratory, whether as clients, suppliers, or even disposal and cleaning services. As a result, HLS has been forced to set up its own delivery, security, catering, and laundry services because outside suppliers declined to do business with it.^[5]

Despite its stated non-violent position, SHAC has been accused of encouraging arson and violent assault. An HLS director was assaulted in front of his child.^[11] HLS managing director Brian Cass was sent a mousetrap primed with razor blades,^[11] and in February 2001 was attacked by three men armed with pickaxe handles and CS gas.^[12] Another businessman with links to HLS was attacked and knocked unconscious adjacent to a barn his assailants had set alight.^[8]

Both SHAC and Animal Liberation Front activists have engaged in harassment and intimidation, including issuing hoax bomb threats and death threats.^[13] The Daily Mail cites as an example the sending of 500 letters to the neighbours of a company manager who did business with HLS; the letter contained an unsupported allegation that the man was a paedophile, with police having to inform all 500 households that the allegations were false.^[14] In 2008 seven of SHAC's senior members were described by prosecutors as "some of the key figures in the Animal Liberation Front" and found guilty of conspiracy to blackmail HLS.^[15]

A Protest in Peterborough to close the HLS by SHAC, July 2008

[edit] Effect of campaign

The campaign against HLS, at its height, brought the company to the brink of collapse.^[11] In 2000, SHAC obtained a list of HLS shareholders, including the names of beneficial owners: anonymous individuals and companies who bought shares in the name of a third party. These included the British Labour Party pension funds, Rover cars, and the London Borough of Camden. The list was passed to the Sunday Telegraph, and several beneficial owners disposed of their shares, including the Labour Party.^[16] Two weeks later, an equity stake of 32 million shares was placed on the London Stock Exchange for one penny each and HLS quotes crashed. The Royal Bank of Scotland, closed HLS's bank account, and wrote off an £11.6 million loan in exchange for a payment of just £1 in order to distance itself from the company.^[17] The British government arranged for the state-owned Bank of England to give them an account, because no other bank would do business with them. The British Banking Association said "Huntingdon Life Sciences are in a nightmare situation."^[18] The company's share price, worth around £300 in the 1990s fell to £1.75 in January 2001, stabilizing at 3 pence by mid-2001.^[17]

On December 21, 2000, HLS was dropped from the New York Stock Exchange because of its share collapse: its market capitalization had fallen below NYSE limits and the NYSE did not accept HLS's revised business plan.^[19] On March 29, 2001, Huntingdon lost both of its market makers and its place on the main platform of the London Stock Exchange.

HLS later decided to move its financial centre to the United States to take advantage of stricter U.S. securities laws, which allow greater anonymity for shareholders. It incorporated in Maryland as Life Sciences Research, Inc. and was saved from bankruptcy when its largest shareholder, American investment bank Stephens, Inc, gave the company a $15-million loan. On September 7, 2005, the New York stock exchange asked Life Sciences Research/HLS to delay its listing; the company had been listed on the junior OTC bulletin board since its move out of the UK. The NYSE offered no reason for the delay, but The Guardian reported it was "after animal rights extremists stepped up their activity in the US,"^[20] and on February 4, 2006, the company lost its only listed market maker, Legacy Trading. As a result, it could no longer trade on the OTC Bulletin Board. As of December 2006, Life Sciences Research is listed on the NYSE Arca electronic exchange.^[21]

From 2006, The Daily Telegraph reports, the British Government took the decision to tackle "the problem of animal rights extremism." ^[8] On 1 May 2007 a police campaign called Operation Achilles was enacted against SHAC, a series of raids involving 700 police officers in England, Amsterdam, and Belgium.^[22] In total 32 people linked to the group were arrested,^[23][24] and seven leading members of SHAC, including Greg Avery, were found guilty of blackmail.^[25] Police estimate that, as a consequence of the operation, "up to three quarters of the most violent activists" are jailed." ^[1] Der Spiegel writes that the number of attacks on HLS and their business declined drastically but "the movement is by no means dead." ^[22]

By September 2007, Cass said that the company's finances had stabilized and that it was "mostly business as usual."^[5] In 2009 Andrew Baker, the chairman and chief executive of HLS's parent company, described HLS as "solidly profitable" and announced that the company intended to return its headquarters to Britain in the anticipation of soon having "normal banking facilities" there.^[1]

[edit] References

[edit] Further reading

• Huntingdon Life Sciences home page
• HLS stance on animal testing
• SHAC: Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty website