Confront animal rights fanatics

[Animal 0]

Confront animal rights fanatics


Published: September 17 2007

Pre-trial hearings begin soon for many of the suspects arrested in Operation Achilles, the UK's most ambitious animal rights extremist investigation to date. The scale of the case should offer no excuse for complacency on the issue in Britain and around the world.

Democratic debate and protest around the testing of medicines is to be welcomed. It has helped limit the number of animals used, made the choice of species more suitable and improved conditions for the experiments that remain essential to improve human health.


Animal extremism, on the other hand, is purely criminal. Its proponents have used slander, physical assault, intimidation and destruction of property at researchers' homes, threats to individual shareholders and even the desecration of graves and disinterment.

That has created a shift in the public mood. Prosecutions and civil injunctions have also helped directly reduce the number of companies capitulating to blackmail in recent years and pulling out of animal testing work. But a troubling amount of such actions still take place and need to be stamped out.

There are a number of lessons for governments. A top priority is to ensure that British politicians maintain the momentum of recent years, with continued political commitment, funding and support for specialised police units to investigate and prosecute extremism.

There is also a need for strengthened international co-operation. The US has increased attention to the issue and prosecuted extremists under domestic terrorism laws. But it has proved slow to co-operate in cross-border investigations, for instance by sharing information on internet use by activists.

Elsewhere in Europe, extremism has until recently been limited and often the result of "day trips" by British-based activists rather than a "home-grown" phenomenon. But the problem is growing, and there is a case to consider fresh penalties across the EU explicitly to criminalise the harassment of third-party suppliers to animal testing organisations - like the legislation passed in the UK in 2005 and already used successfully several times.

There is also more that industry can do. Animal testing is an essential part of drug development, which benefits not only pharmaceutical companies but human health and economic growth.

Drug companies should be more courageous in openly declaring that they use the animal testing sub-contractors targeted by extremists, and stress their essential role in developing new life-saving medicines.

Recent changes to companies legislation that waive the obligation for companies to cite publicly the names of their auditors and bankers, in the same way that company directors under threat can claim exemption from publishing their home addresses, could be revisited.

But in any case it is time that the business community more broadly - including banks, insurers, auditors, stock exchanges and the full range of service providers - re-established links to animal testing organisations. A handful of criminal extremists cannot be allowed to bully entire sectors into submission.



Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007