Huntingdon Life Sciences
Encyclopedia
Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) is a contract animal-testing company founded in 1952 in England, with facilities in Huntingdon
, Cambridgeshire; Eye, Suffolk; New Jersey
in the U.S., and Japan. HLS conducts tests on around 75,000 animals every year—including rats, rabbits, pigs, dogs, and primates—testing pharmaceutical products, agricultural chemicals, industrial chemicals, and foodstuffs on behalf of private clients worldwide. With over 1,600 staff, it is the largest such commercial operation in Europe.
Huntingdon has been campaigned against since 1999, when 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 the company by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
(PETA), and later shown on British television, showed staff punching and laughing at the animals in their care. 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 reported a five 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."
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).
Huntingdon is criticised by animal rights and animal welfare
groups for 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 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.
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 fired. 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. 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."
Since then, animal rights supporters have alleged similar offences at the company's labs 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.
Huntingdon Life Sciences obtained a 'gagging order' in the U.S. that prevents PETA from publicising or talking about any of the information that they discovered. The order also prevents PETA from communicating with the American Department of Agriculture, which had been going to investigate the evidence.
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" — although HLS's MD Brian Cass reportedly referred to Blair as a "bastard" 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.
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.
Despite its stated non-violent position, SHAC members have been convicted of crimes of violence against HLS employees. On 25 October 2010 five SHAC members received prison sentences for threatening HLS staff. SHAC has also been accused of encouraging arson
and violent assault. An HLS director was assaulted in front of his child. HLS managing director Brian Cass was sent a mousetrap primed with razor blades, and in February 2001 was attacked by three men armed with pickaxe handles and CS gas. Another businessman with links to HLS was attacked and knocked unconscious adjacent to a barn his assailants had set alight.
Both SHAC and Animal Liberation Front
activists have engaged in harassment
and intimidation, including issuing hoax bomb threats and death threats. 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. 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.
The campaign against HLS, at its height, brought the company to the brink of collapse. 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 investors divested themselves of their shares, including the Labour Party. 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. 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." 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.
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. On March 29, 2001, Huntingdon lost both of its market maker
s 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," 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.
From 2006, The Daily Telegraph reports, the British Government took the decision to tackle "the problem of animal rights extremism." 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. In total 32 people linked to the group were arrested, and seven leading members of SHAC, including Greg Avery
, were found guilty of blackmail. Police estimate that, as a consequence of the operation, "up to three quarters of the most violent activists" are jailed." Der Spiegel
writes that the number of attacks on HLS and their business declined drastically but "the movement is by no means dead."
By September 2007, Cass said that the company's finances had stabilized and that it was "mostly business as usual." 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.
Huntingdon
Huntingdon is a market town in Cambridgeshire, England. The town was chartered by King John in 1205. It is the traditional county town of Huntingdonshire, and is currently the seat of the Huntingdonshire district council. It is known as the birthplace in 1599 of Oliver Cromwell.-History:Huntingdon...
, Cambridgeshire; Eye, Suffolk; New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
in the U.S., and Japan. HLS conducts tests on around 75,000 animals every year—including rats, rabbits, pigs, dogs, and primates—testing pharmaceutical products, agricultural chemicals, industrial chemicals, and foodstuffs on behalf of private clients worldwide. With over 1,600 staff, it is the largest such commercial operation in Europe.
Huntingdon has been campaigned against since 1999, when British animal rights
Animal rights
Animal rights, also known as animal liberation, is the idea that the most basic interests of non-human animals should be afforded the same consideration as the similar interests of human beings...
activists set up Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty is an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences , Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates...
(SHAC), an international campaign to close the company down. The campaign was started after film shot secretly inside the company by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals is an American animal rights organization based in Norfolk, Virginia, and led by Ingrid Newkirk, its international president. A non-profit corporation with 300 employees and two million members and supporters, it claims to be the largest animal rights...
(PETA), and later shown on British television, showed staff punching and laughing at the animals in their care. Since then the company has suffered a severe financial downturn and several of its staff and customers have been subject to direct action
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the direct action...
that has sometimes been illegal and even violent.
Financial figures released by the company in 2007 reported a five percent increase in gross profits of $50 million on revenues of $190 million, leading managing director Brian Cass
Brian Cass
Brian Cass is the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences , an animal-testing research company based in Huntingdon, England, and New Jersey in the United States. Before moving to HLS, Cass was a director of Covance...
to plead to the financial services industry to stop treating Huntingdon as "radioactive."
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 protectionCrop protection
Crop protection is the branch of horticulture concerned with protecting crops from pests, weeds, disease and theft.It encompasses:* Pesticide-based approaches such as herbicides, insecticides and fungicides...
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
Toxicology testing
Toxicology testing, also known as safety testing, or toxicity testing, is conducted by pharmaceutical companies testing drugs, or by contract animal testing facilities such as Huntingdon Life Sciences and Inveresk Research International on behalf of a wide variety of customers, including the...
.
HLS's managing director, Brian Cass, was awarded the CBE
Order of the British Empire
The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V of the United Kingdom. The Order comprises five classes in civil and military divisions...
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).
Controversy
Animal welfare
Animal welfare is the physical and psychological well-being of animals.The term animal welfare can also mean human concern for animal welfare or a position in a debate on animal ethics and animal rights...
groups for 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 PETA showed serious breaches of animal-protection laws, including a beagle
Beagle
The Beagle is a breed of small to medium-sized dog. A member of the Hound Group, it is similar in appearance to the Foxhound, but smaller, with shorter legs and longer, softer ears. Beagles are scent hounds, developed primarily for tracking hare, rabbit, and other game...
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.
On July 24, 1997, Home Office minister George Howarth
George Howarth
George Edward Howarth is a British Labour Party politician, who has been the Member of Parliament for Knowsley North from 1986 until 1997, and since then for its replacement Knowsley North and Sefton East....
told the House of Commons
British House of Commons
The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, which also comprises the Sovereign and the House of Lords . Both Commons and Lords meet in the Palace of Westminster. The Commons is a democratically elected body, consisting of 650 members , who are known as Members...
: "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 fired. 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. 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."
Since then, animal rights supporters have alleged similar offences at the company's labs 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.
Huntingdon Life Sciences obtained a 'gagging order' in the U.S. that prevents PETA from publicising or talking about any of the information that they discovered. The order also prevents PETA from communicating with the American Department of Agriculture, which had been going to investigate the evidence.
According to Tony Blair
Tony Blair
Anthony Charles Lynton Blair is a former British Labour Party politician who served as the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 2 May 1997 to 27 June 2007. He was the Member of Parliament for Sedgefield from 1983 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007...
's office, while he was prime minister he was a supporter of HLS — a spokesman called him "very pro-science in relation to this" — although HLS's MD Brian Cass reportedly referred to Blair as a "bastard" 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
David Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville
David John Sainsbury, Baron Sainsbury of Turville, FRS , is a British businessman and politician. From 1992 to 1997, he served as the Chairman of Sainsbury's . He was made a life peer in 1997, and currently sits in the House of Lords as a member of the Labour Party...
with making the decision to tackle animal rights extremism in Britain.
Protests and intimidation
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty is an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences , Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates...
, (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
Direct action
Direct action is activity undertaken by individuals, groups, or governments to achieve political, economic, or social goals outside of normal social/political channels. This can include nonviolent and violent activities which target persons, groups, or property deemed offensive to the 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.
Despite its stated non-violent position, SHAC members have been convicted of crimes of violence against HLS employees. On 25 October 2010 five SHAC members received prison sentences for threatening HLS staff. SHAC has also been accused of encouraging arson
Arson
Arson is the crime of intentionally or maliciously setting fire to structures or wildland areas. It may be distinguished from other causes such as spontaneous combustion and natural wildfires...
and violent assault. An HLS director was assaulted in front of his child. HLS managing director Brian Cass was sent a mousetrap primed with razor blades, and in February 2001 was attacked by three men armed with pickaxe handles and CS gas. Another businessman with links to HLS was attacked and knocked unconscious adjacent to a barn his assailants had set alight.
Both SHAC and Animal Liberation Front
Animal Liberation Front
The Animal Liberation Front is an international, underground leaderless resistance that engages in illegal direct action in pursuit of animal liberation...
activists have engaged in harassment
Harassment
Harassment covers a wide range of behaviors of an offensive nature. It is commonly understood as behaviour intended to disturb or upset, and it is characteristically repetitive. In the legal sense, it is intentional behaviour which is found threatening or disturbing...
and intimidation, including issuing hoax bomb threats and death threats. 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. 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.
Effect of campaign
Labour Party (UK)
The Labour Party is a centre-left democratic socialist party in the United Kingdom. It surpassed the Liberal Party in general elections during the early 1920s, forming minority governments under Ramsay MacDonald in 1924 and 1929-1931. The party was in a wartime coalition from 1940 to 1945, after...
pension funds, Rover
Rover (car)
The Rover Company is a former British car manufacturing company founded as Starley & Sutton Co. of Coventry in 1878. After developing the template for the modern bicycle with its Rover Safety Bicycle of 1885, the company moved into the automotive industry...
cars, and the London Borough of Camden
London Borough of Camden
In 1801, the civil parishes that form the modern borough were already developed and had a total population of 96,795. This continued to rise swiftly throughout the 19th century, as the district became built up; reaching 270,197 in the middle of the century...
. The list was passed to the Sunday Telegraph, and several investors divested themselves of their shares, including the Labour Party. Two weeks later, an equity stake of 32 million shares was placed on the London Stock Exchange
London Stock Exchange
The London Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located in the City of London within the United Kingdom. , the Exchange had a market capitalisation of US$3.7495 trillion, making it the fourth-largest stock exchange in the world by this measurement...
for one penny each and HLS quotes crashed. The Royal Bank of Scotland
Royal Bank of Scotland
The Royal Bank of Scotland Group is a British banking and insurance holding company in which the UK Government holds an 84% stake. This stake is held and managed through UK Financial Investments Limited, whose voting rights are limited to 75% in order for the bank to retain its listing on the...
, 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. The British government arranged for the state-owned Bank of England
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694, it is the second oldest central bank in the world...
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." 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.
On December 21, 2000, HLS was dropped from the New York Stock Exchange
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange is a stock exchange located at 11 Wall Street in Lower Manhattan, New York City, USA. It is by far the world's largest stock exchange by market capitalization of its listed companies at 13.39 trillion as of Dec 2010...
because of its share collapse: its market capitalization
Market capitalization
Market capitalization is a measurement of the value of the ownership interest that shareholders hold in a business enterprise. It is equal to the share price times the number of shares outstanding of a publicly traded company...
had fallen below NYSE limits and the NYSE did not accept HLS's revised business plan. On March 29, 2001, Huntingdon lost both of its market maker
Market maker
A market maker is a company, or an individual, that quotes both a buy and a sell price in a financial instrument or commodity held in inventory, hoping to make a profit on the bid-offer spread, or turn. From a market microstructure theory standpoint, market makers are net sellers of an option to be...
s and its place on the main platform of the London Stock Exchange.
HLS later decided to move its financial centre to the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
to take advantage of stricter U.S. securities laws, which allow greater anonymity for shareholders. It incorporated in Maryland
Maryland
Maryland is a U.S. state located in the Mid Atlantic region of the United States, bordering Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware to its east...
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," 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
OTC Bulletin Board
The OTC Bulletin Board or OTCBB is an interdealer electronic quotation system in the United States that displays real-time quotes, last-sale prices, and volume information for many over-the-counter equity securities that are not listed on the NASDAQ stock exchange or a national securities exchange...
. As of December 2006, Life Sciences Research is listed on the NYSE Arca electronic exchange.
From 2006, The Daily Telegraph reports, the British Government took the decision to tackle "the problem of animal rights extremism." 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. In total 32 people linked to the group were arrested, and seven leading members of SHAC, including Greg Avery
Greg Avery
Greg Avery is a British animal rights activist. He is chiefly known as a founding member of several influential animal rights campaigns — focusing on opposition to the animal testing industry — that have dramatically altered the nature of the animal rights movement in the UK...
, were found guilty of blackmail. Police estimate that, as a consequence of the operation, "up to three quarters of the most violent activists" are jailed." Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel
Der Spiegel is a German weekly news magazine published in Hamburg. It is one of Europe's largest publications of its kind, with a weekly circulation of more than one million.-Overview:...
writes that the number of attacks on HLS and their business declined drastically but "the movement is by no means dead."
By September 2007, Cass said that the company's finances had stabilized and that it was "mostly business as usual." 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.