Animal rights group blocks road near Shell plant
Date: 07-Sep-01
Country: UK
Around 20 protesters lay on the ground chained to oil drums filled with concrete, blocking a road near the refinery in Stanlow, Cheshire.
"Basically, it's to bring public attention to the fact that Shell kills animals at HLS (Huntingdon Life Sciences), that they torture animals there," said protester Joseph Dawson.
"It's to say to Shell that if you involve yourself with Huntingdon you can expect this sort of disruption to happen. Shell must be losing thousands of pounds of business today because their plant's virtually closed down," said Dawson, a supporter of the Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty group.
A Shell spokesman denied the plant had been closed, and said only there was some traffic congestion outside the refinery.
He said Shell had tests done by Huntingdon, but that it aimed to find alternatives to using animals in safety tests.
"We commission a small amount of animal testing in cases where there are no other reliable means of ensuring the safety of our products," the spokesman said.
"Our research indicates that tests commissioned by Shell last year accounted for less than 0.02 percent of tests involving animals in the UK."
But Dawson said the protesters had no plans to move.
"People are prepared to stay for days and days. As long as it takes, until they're removed," he said.
Huntingdon is one of Britain's largest contract research organisations, but the 70,000 or so animals it uses each year represent only a fraction of the total experimented on for medical research. More are used in laboratories of big drug companies such as GlaxoSmithKline Plc and AstraZeneca Plc.
