Animal testing protests have fizzled: lab boss

Nervous banks and investors should renew their backing for a medical research laboratory now that a campaign against it by animal rights extremists is all but over, says its chief executive.

	Brian Cass, head of HLS: 'All we are asking is to be treated the same way as other firms'

Brian Cass, the head of Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), said: "So much of the activity [from animal rights campaigners] has gone away - and a lot of the activists are behind bars."

He called for "one final push" from the police to target and jail the small number of extremists still at large.

Critics of Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac) say its latest move - the claim to have poisoned hundreds of tubes and bottles of Savlon - smacks of desperation and proves that animal rights extremism is in its death throes.

The makers of the antiseptic cream, the Swiss company Novartis, is thought to be a client of HLS. And it is this sort of link that has led fearful financial service companies in effect to boycott the company, refusing it such facilities as banking, insurance, auditing and share dealing.

Because of this, the Government has stepped in to help, arranging special banking facilities, but HLS says the arrangement is far from ideal.

Mr Cass said: "I think we now have the situation 99 per cent under control but, unfortunately, many people's perception is that this is not the case."

In an impassioned plea for a change of heart by the financial sector, he said: "I still struggle to know what it is going to take to get back to normal relations. We are an important and successful part of the animal research community. All we are asking is to be treated the same way as other firms and be given the same commercial services that they are given. The most important thing is to be given a normal bank account because that will open other doors."

He said the extremists had been defeated by better laws and the recognition that some of their actions, such as the digging up the remains of an elderly woman whose family ran a guinea pig farm, had proved counter-productive.

HLS, which is Europe's largest contract testing laboratory, has been targeted by Shac since 1999, two years after an undercover television reporter infiltrated its research centre in Cambridgeshire and obtained secretly-recorded footage of technicians abusing a beagle.

Mr Cass, 60, was one of several staff to be beaten or intimidated as the company was brought to the brink of bankruptcy. He was battered with a pickaxe handle outside his home six years ago.

Mr Cass criticised the latest actions by activists against Novartis, which led to the withdrawal of thousands of items from sale.

He said: "It's very easy for someone to make the sort of claims they have with nothing behind them and it is unfortunate that they [the claims] lead to such far-reaching implications."

Nine leading animal rights activists are currently serving jail sentences of up to 12 years for blackmail, criminal damage, conspiracy and other offences.

Three alleged Shac members have been remanded in custody. Twelve more have been charged and 15 others are on police bail pending further inquiries following Operation Achilles, the attempt by the police in May to target extremists.

The Animal Liberation Front, however, remains defiant. "You can imprison an individual, but you can't imprison an ideal,'' said a spokesman.