Standing Up To Cowards

The men who stood up to animal rights' militants
Not once, even in his darkest hour after he was beaten outside his home with pickaxe handles, did Brian Cass think of walking away from his job as managing director of Hungtingdon Life Sciences (HLS).

By Andrew Alderson, Chief Reporter Last Updated: 11:41PM GMT 17 Jan 2009

He says he could never have lived with himself if he had bowed to violence and intimidation from animal rights activists.

Instead, Mr Cass risked his life by standing up and being counted when countless of other firms publicly declared they would have nothing to do with HLS even though the company was, as the law insists, simply testing new drugs on animals before they could be declared safe for human use.

While animal rights activists protested in their SHAC – Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty – T-shirts, Mr Cass started wearing a design of his own.

It said SHAC on the front but the acronym was spelt out on the back as: "Spongers Hypocrites Anarchists Cowards".

Tomorrow Mr Cass and a small group of defiant businessmen will see most of the leaders of SHAC sentenced to lengthy jail terms for their part in a ten-year campaign aimed at shutting down the company, which employs 1,700 people worldwide. Read More

Even in the face of being killed, the leaders of Huntingdon Life Sciences knew the importance of their work and standing up for what is right. Those of us in the United States, and particularly our farmers and ranchers, have never backed down from a fight. And we aren’t going to start now by bowing down to the animal rights extremist cowards.