Glaxo chief: animal rights cowards are terrorising us

The head of Britain's biggest drug company condemned animal rights activists as "despicable cowards" yesterday and said the security threat they posed was seriously damaging the economy.

Jean-Pierre Garnier, the chief executive of GlaxoSmithkline, said his company was spending tens of millions of pounds on protecting staff and buildings from militants.

"This is money that could be spent on research and development of new drugs," he said. "Britain has to do more with its police and the judicial system because we are being terrorised."

Glaxo employs 6,000 research scientists in Britain, which represents nearly half of the company's total research staff.

Mr Garnier said: "I work hard to bring in investment to the United Kingdom and have talked many times to friends who are in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology businesses about moving here.

"But there is one issue that exists only in the UK and nowhere else has a comparative effect from extreme actions by animal rights activists."

He said he had specific examples of companies that had refused to set up research facilities because there were no guarantees that their staff would be safe. However, he refused to name any of them.

Mr Garnier, who lives in Philadelphia, said that members of his staff had faced extreme threats because of their involvement in testing potential drugs on animals.

"I take it very personally," he said. "When your general counsel [the head of the legal department] has to go into hiding in some apartment and has to move out of his house with his young children because he has been threatened, you do take that personally." Mr Garnier was commenting after an academic estimated this week that the threats from anti-vivisection militants were costing the country £1 billion a year.

The Association for the British Pharmaceutical Industry said the threats were putting Britain's dominant position in the pharmaceutical industry at risk.

"You have to bear in mind how important British research is," a spokesman said yesterday.

"A quarter of the top 100 drugs were discovered here and there is a risk that this great knowledge and expertise will move elsewhere, or even be lost."

Tony Blair and Gordon Brown have been told during recent meetings with the industry that several pharmaceutical giants are threatening to pull out unless the problem is tackled. David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, is expected to publish a strategy document on the issue this week.

Britain is seen by activists as the focus of the most successful anti-vivisection campaigns in the world.

Animal rights militants have sent leaflets to the neighbours of pharmaceutical executives, accusing the executives of paedophilia. They have also firebombed the cars of scientists and technicians.

Brian Cass, who runs the Huntingdon Life Sciences research laboratory, was attacked with a baseball bat.

Companies indirectly involved in animal testing, such as the contractors who were building the new animal research laboratory for Oxford University, have also been terrorised.

Montpellier Group, a construction company, and the concrete company RMC pulled out of the project.

However, an Oxford University spokesman said yesterday that it was confident that the laboratory would be completed on time.

Police sources estimate that there is a core of 50 to 100 militant activists using a variety of names.

Activist groups include Speak, which has been campaigning for the closure of the Oxford laboratory, and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (Shac). Speak has insisted that it carries out legal activities only and Shac has said it does not condone violence.

The business community is offering £25 million in rewards for information leading to the conviction of extremists.

Although companies have won civil injunctions barring individual activists from the homes of scientists, they have found it more difficult to pin down the groups.

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