GSK plc is a British multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology company with global headquarters in London. It was established in 2000 by a merger of Glaxo Wellcome and SmithKline Beecham, which was itself a merger of a number of pharmaceutical companies around the Smith, Kline & French firm.
Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) was a contract research organisation (CRO) founded in 1951 in Cambridgeshire, England. It had two laboratories in the United Kingdom and one in the United States. With over 1,600 staff, it was until 2015 the largest non-clinical CRO in Europe. In September 2015, Huntingdon Life Sciences, Harlan Laboratories, GFA, NDA Analytics and LSR associates merged into Envigo, which later sold off the CRO part.
Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was an international animal rights campaign to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS), Europe's largest contract animal-testing laboratory. HLS tests medical and non-medical substances on around 75,000 animals every year, from rats to primates. It has been the subject of several major leaks or undercover investigations by activists and reporters since 1989.
Labcorp Drug Development is a contract research organization headquartered in Burlington, North Carolina, providing nonclinical, preclinical, clinical and commercialization services to pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. Formerly called Covance, the company is part of Labcorp, which employs more than 70,000 people worldwide.
Chiron Corporation was an American multinational biotechnology firm founded in 1981, based in Emeryville, California, that was acquired by Novartis on April 20, 2006. It had offices and facilities in eighteen countries on five continents. Chiron's business and research was in three main areas: biopharmaceuticals, vaccines, and blood testing. Chiron's vaccines and blood testing units were combined to form Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics, while Chiron BioPharmaceuticals was integrated into Novartis Pharmaceuticals. In 2014, Novartis completed the sale of its blood transfusion diagnostics unit to Grifols and announced agreements for the sale of its vaccines unit to GlaxoSmithKline.
Brian Cass is the managing director of Huntingdon Life Sciences, a contract research organisation company based in Huntingdon in the United Kingdom and New Jersey in the United States. Before moving to Huntingdon Life Sciences, Cass was the managing director of Covance Laboratories Ltd. He was appointed a CBE in 2002.
Charles River Laboratories International, Inc., is an American pharmaceutical company specializing in a variety of preclinical and clinical laboratory, gene therapy and cell therapy services for the pharmaceutical, medical device and biotechnology industries. It also supplies assorted biomedical products, outsourcing services, and animals for research and development in the pharmaceutical industry and offers support in the fields of basic research, drug discovery, safety and efficacy, clinical support, and manufacturing.
Shamrock Farm was the United Kingdom's only non-human primate importation and quarantine centre, located in Small Dole, near Henfield in West Sussex. The centre, owned by Bausch and Lomb and run by Charles River Laboratories, Inc. for Shamrock (GB) Ltd, provided animals to various laboratories and universities for use in animal testing. It was Europe's largest supplier of primates to laboratories, and held up to 350 monkeys at a time.
SPEAK is a British animal rights group working to end animal testing in the UK.
Pro-Test was a British group that promoted and supported animal testing in medical research. It was founded on 29 January 2006 to counter SPEAK, an animal-rights campaign opposing the construction by Oxford University of a biomedical and animal-research facility, which SPEAK believes may include a primate-testing centre. Pro-Test held its first rally on 25 February 2006, attracting hundreds in support of the research facility and opposed by a smaller number of anti-lab demonstrators.
Nicolas Atwood is an American animal rights activist based in West Palm Beach, Florida. He maintains the Malaysia-registered Bite Back direct-action website, which is associated with the Animal Liberation Front.
The People's Petition was an online campaign to express support for medical experimentation using animals in the United Kingdom. Within a year of launch the number of signatures exceeded 21,850 and included Tony Blair, the then-serving Prime Minister.
Experiments involving non-human primates (NHPs) include toxicity testing for medical and non-medical substances; studies of infectious disease, such as HIV and hepatitis; neurological studies; behavior and cognition; reproduction; genetics; and xenotransplantation. Around 65,000 NHPs are used every year in the United States, and around 7,000 across the European Union. Most are purpose-bred, while some are caught in the wild.
This timeline of Animal Liberation Front (ALF) actions describes the history, consequences and theory of direct action on behalf of animals by animal liberation activists using, or associated with the ALF.
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) is an international, leaderless, decentralized political and social resistance movement that advocates and engages in what it claims non-violent direct action in protest against incidents of animal cruelty. It originated in Britain in the 1970s from the Bands of Mercy. Participants state it is a modern-day Underground Railroad, removing animals from laboratories and farms, destroying facilities, arranging safe houses, veterinary care and operating sanctuaries where the animals subsequently live. Critics have labelled them as eco-terrorists.
Mel Brown is a British landscape gardener and animal rights activist who rose to public prominence due to a planned bombing campaign aimed at preventing the construction of a new research laboratory at Oxford University. He was the co-founder in 2004, with Robert Cogswell, of SPEAK, The Voice for the Animals, a campaign to stop animal testing in Britain, which is focused on opposition to a new animal laboratory at Oxford University.
Heather Nicholson is a British animal rights activist.
Harlan Sprague Dawley Inc. was a supplier of animals and other services to laboratories for the purpose of animal testing. It provided pre-clinical research tools and services for the pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agrochemicals, industrial chemical, and food industries.
The pharmaceutical industry in the United Kingdom directly employs around 73,000 people and in 2007 contributed £8.4 billion to the UK's GDP and invested a total of £3.9 billion in research and development. In 2007 exports of pharmaceutical products from the UK totalled £14.6 billion, creating a trade surplus in pharmaceutical products of £4.3 billion.
Animal welfare and rights in the People's Republic of China is a topic of growing interest. China has had limited animal protections by international standards, and animal-rights activists have condemned the treatment of animals in the country. Movements towards animal welfare and animal rights are expanding in China, including among homegrown Chinese activists, but face resistance from nationalists.
