Huntingdon faces receivership as protesters target financial backers

Published: 3-Feb-2001


The future of UK drug testing company Huntingdon Life Sciences, which has been continuously besieged by campaigners against animal testing since 1999, was uncertain as Manufacturing Chemist went to press. The company will be forced into receivership if its financers do not delay repayment of a £22.6m loan — an outcome which it, and the government, claim could threaten the future of the pharmaceuticals industry in the UK.

Protests by the animal rights group Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty, and by other antivivisection activists, have forced the company to postpone talks with US investors to refinance HLS. Because of this, the company has asked the Royal Bank of Scotland to delay its loan repayment, which was due on 19 January, until its directors can meet their potential investors.

Huntingdon has friends in high places, however. Science minister Lord Sainsbury has spoken to executives at the Royal Bank, warning them that pharmaceutical companies may decide to pull out of the UK if Huntingdon is forced to close. 'If HLS was shut down, that would mean it was more difficult for medical research to take place in this country,' he explained to the BBC's World at One current affairs programme. 'Certainly some jobs would go abroad and some pharmaceutical companies would say "We're not going to put our research facilities in the UK".'

HLS is one of the largest contract research organisations in the UK, with 1,200 staff in the UK and facilities in Princeton, NJ, US. It carries out research on behalf of pharmaceuticals, industrial chemicals, agrochemicals and food manufacturers.

SHAC's protests involve demonstrations at the company's premises near Cambridge, UK, and at the Royal Bank's branches, as well as letter-writing and petitions to HLS's shareholders and customers. The organisation claims on its website that HLS 'routinely breaches the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, which HLS denies. The company has also been faced with more violent protests, including petrol-bombing of employees' cars.

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