Controversy
Huntingdon is criticised by animal rights and animal welfare groups for using animals in research, for instances of animal abuse and for the wide range of substances it tests on animals, particularly non-medical products. It is claimed by SHAC that 500 animals died every day at HLS (182,500 a year)., a figure at odds with HLS' published numbers.
Huntingdon's labs were infiltrated by undercover animal rights activists in 1997 in the UK and in 1998 in the US.
In 1997, film secretly recorded inside HLS in the UK by BUAV and subsequently broadcast on Channel 4 television as "It's a Dog's Life", 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 laboratory technicians responsible were suspended from HLS the day after the broadcast. 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."
In 1998, an undercover investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (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. According to PETA some of the film she shot showed a monkey being dissected while still alive and 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 US that prevents PETA from publicising or talking about any of the information that they discovered. The order also prevented PETA from communicating with the American Department of Agriculture, which had been going to investigate the evidence.
Read more about this topic: Huntingdon Life Sciences
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