Scottish newspaper The Herald recently reported on a dossier it received which listed more than 100 UK customers of Huntingdon Life Sciences which Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty apparently plans to target in the next phase of its campaign against the firm.
The dossier contains the list along with advice from SHAC on how to go after the firms. The Herald quotes from the dossier,
The sky really is the limit in how you target customers . . . The message to these customers is simple: sever your links with HLS, make a statement to that effect and we will back off. Simple. . . . HLS is a disgusting, criminal hell-hole and the people who deal with them should be viewed in the same way.
In an accompanying editorial, The Herald had a well-written denunciation of SHAC and what it stands for,
It has brought HLS to the brink before by employing terrorist tactics to frighten off firms doing business with the research company. Deloitte and Touche, the accountancy firm, is the latest to abandon HLS after the homes of its directors were targeted by animal activists.
Flushed with success, the Shac group has apparently drawn up a new list of more than 100 British customers of HLS that could come in for similar treatment. They include six Scottish businesses. Organon, which has drug-testing laboratories in Lanarkshire, is one. Hans De Ridder, its director of research, described the Shac as “a violent action group”. Being on the list was not something the company appreciated, he said; quite an understatement, given the group’s behaviour to date. It is understandable when businesses decide enough is enough after their employees (including eminent scientists) are threatened and have their homes vandalised by animal rights groups. But it serves neither scientific progress nor democratic values well to give in to thuggish actions.
Now if only the UK government would display the same sort of backbone.
Sources:
Animal rights group’s new targets include Scots firms. Martin Williams, The Herald (Scotland), March 4, 2003.