Animal-rights activists were dealt a dual blow in late July when the UK government and the pharmaceutical industry announced new legislation and funds to support animal research.

New laws make life difficult for protesters, who have prevented the launch of at least two research centers in the UK. Credit: REUTERS/Peter Macdiarmid

Activists seemed to have scored another victory when the building contractor Montpellier on 19 July withdrew from plans to build an £18 million animal research center at Oxford University, after its shareholders received threatening letters. The University of Cambridge in January dropped a plan for a new primate research center after a similar campaign (Nat. Med. 10, 215; 2004).

But on 30 July, the UK government made protesting outside an individual's home an arrestable offense, and warned that animal-rights extremists are “organised in a quasi-terrorist cellular structure.” Under the new policy, harassment laws will be extended to cover groups of employees, and a specialist police unit and 43 specialist prosecutors will tackle violent protestors.

The new report is “clearly the strongest statement yet of the government on the issue and leaves no doubt at all that they intend to resolve the problem,” says Mark Matfield, executive director of the Research Defence Society, which represents scientists engaged in animal research.

[This is] clearly the strongest statement yet of the government on the issue. Mark Matfield, Research Defence Society

On the same day, drug giants GlaxoSmithKline, AstraZeneca and Pfizer also launched a four-year £4 million research fund to pay for animal experiments. The companies said they would back fellowships and pay for lab equipment to help universities continue animal testing.

Supporters of animal research welcomed the developments, but some caution that activists will not so easily be thwarted. “Identification of the seriousness of the problem is a step forward, [but] I doubt if it will inhibit the more determined political activists,” says Ian Gibson, chair of the House of Commons Science and Technology Committee.