Together with the Gateway to Hell Campaign a demo was organised outside Sequani Labs in Ledbury, Hereford. Vivisectors are always telling us British Labs are like hotels for animals so around 30 activists decided to highlight this disgusting lie by having an all day demo outside Sequani (a contract research organisation).
Firstly, police threatened an activist with arrest for using the term “puppy killers”, saying it’s offensive. Next they were trying to obtain details from lawful protesters, which angered them when they were refused. The demo was so succesful with such a good atmosphere that passers by started to pap their horns, this was met with blue lights by the police who followed them, issuing £30 fines to the motorists.
Previous features: World Day for Animals in Laboratories March | Anti-vivisection campaigners convicted of blackmail | Solidarity For Political Prisoner Sean Kirtley | Carnival Against Vivisection | Sequani Besieged by Surprise Action | Indymedia UK Stop Sequani topic page
Sequani Limited are a Contract Research Organisation (CRO) that test pharmaceutical drugs, chemical compounds and medical devices on animals. Tests that are carried out at Sequani include; acute toxicity tests, reproduction toxicology tests, carcinogenicity tests, mutagenicity tests and repeat dose toxicology tests.
Among the animal ‘test models’ that Sequani imprison and experiment on are beagle dogs, rabbits, genetically stunted pigs known as ‘minipigs’, transgenic mice, chinese hamsters, rats and guinea pigs. These animals know no other life than that of which their captors have chosen for them; a life of imprisonment, misery, suffering, fear and death.
Barbaric animal experiments that offer dangerously misleading data obtained by testing drugs on non-human animals have already led to the cruel and agonising deaths of countless millions of non-human animal lives. Animal tested drugs have also led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human lives.
Protests held against Sequani vivisection laboratories in Ledbury, have spanned over the last 20 years. First focusing on the notorious Toxicol Laboratories UK in the 1980’s, then Quintiles England in the late 1990’s, now ‘Sequani Limited’. Different company names, same company registration number, same company location, same animal killers.
In May 2008, Sean Kirtley was sentenced to four and a half years in prison after an 18 week trial which was at the time the longest running animal rights trial in history. He was found guilty of “conspiracy to interfere with contractual relationships so as to harm animal research organisation”.
Sean along with many others had his door smashed in and his house raided by police back in 2006 as part of “Operation Tornado” which was designed to start a case and try and lock up peaceful animal rights campaigners using new SOCPA legislation which was created to protect the vivisection industry from effective campaigners such as Sean and the Sequani defendants.
He was behind the SSAT (Stop Sequani Animal Testing) website and was seen by the police as the organiser of many the demonstrations against Sequani and suppliers of Sequani. He never himself actually broke the law during any protests, the police were present for most of the demonstrations he attended.
