The decades-long fight to shut down Huntingdon Life Sciences may finally have a decisive ending. This is somewhat old news but is not well known: After Fortress dumped HLS under pressure from SHAC and DC-based DARRT, HLS barely survived. They merged in 2015 with two other companies into a new firm called Envigo, with a new lab in Cumberland, Va. In summer 2022, that lab was finally forced to stop their animal testing.
In 2019, PETA broke from their recent pattern of mostly high-profile publicity actions, and returning to their roots slipped an undercover investigator inside Envigo. This basically restarted the entire campaign against HLS from scratch, and the take from the investigation showed the same old torture HLS has always been known for. Enough was enough, and even the US Dept of Justice decided this was too much. Both Federal and state action ensued, ending in a July 2022 settlement in which Envigo surrendered all of their nearly 4,000 beagles and agreed never again to engage in activities requiring an Animal Welfare Act license. The dogs were distributed among a large number of shelters and all were adopted by Sep 1 that year.
It took decades to achieve this result. I, the author of this report, participated myself in anti-HLS protests by DARTT (Defending Animal Rights Today and Tomorrow) whose actions during the 2010 “siege of fortress” played so strong a role in killing HLS’s ability to survive as a standalone business. While HLS’s friends in the UK government succeeded in killing SHAC with a storm of prosecutions and imprisonoments, HLS emerged from that fight like a warship that sunk all their opponents only to end up too shot up to make it home through ocean storms. This led to the 2015 merger that created Envigo, and now Envigo has been forced to shut down their lab and give up the beagles they were torturing. This delayed victory passed unnoticed by many because of the chaos in the United States since 2016, and because Envigo escaped from the name “HLS” with the merger.
The tough, grinding, decades-long campaign of attrition that sank HLS lasted longer than the US war in Afghanistan and much of the time was spent week after week, slugging away with home demos against the same targets. We had to drive off HLS investors and customers faster than we lost fighters to prosecution or burnout.
Anyway, the verdict is now in: SHAC tactics WORK! Animal rights activists won, HLS lost. This is a lesson learned for many later fights such as the current fight in Atlanta against Cop City.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Envigo