As far as I can remember, Huntingdon Life Sciences has never criticized a company that severed its relationship with the testing firm due to pressure from animal rights activists. To some extent, it’s difficult to blame companies that don’t want their employees and their families subject to harassment because they happen to provide cleaning supplies or some other tangential service to Huntingdon.
But when Securicor announced it would not renew its current contract with HLS, a spokesman for HLS criticized the move and rightly so, in this writer’s opinion.
Securicor is a private security firm that provided security guards and other personnel to protect HLS facilities. Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty recently targeted Securicor, and the firm capitulated very quickly, drawing a bit of criticism from an HLS spokesman who was quoted by Cambridge News as saying,
It seems slightly ironic when their staff have been taking all this flak for years that they have a few demonstrations at their head office and they capitulate.
Apparently when the working stiffs on the front lines were the subject of animal rights harassment that was perfectly okay as long as HLS kept signing those checks. The second a few of the company’s executives and manager had to experience this sort of harassment, however, and the company cut and run as quickly as it could.
Of course for good measure SHAC’s Greg Avery said his group would keep up the pressure on Securicor until the company withdrew its security personnel when its contract expires in March 2004.
Source:
HLS raps Securicor for contract decision. Cambridge News, February 2, 2004.