|
Money Talks
Greg Avery has spent seven years trying to close down Huntingdon Life
Sciences. His early, crude opposition to animal experiments twice
landed him in jail. But then he took his fight to the City - which is
where, he claims, you really get results. Steve Boggan meets him
...
It is difficult not to fall back on stereotypes when waiting to meet
Britain's most prolific animal rights campaigner. He is bound to
arrive, his frame emaciated by a monk-like adherence to veganism, with
a scraggy dog on a piece of string. He will stare with disapproval at
my leather shoes and probe deftly into my meat-eating tendencies. He
might even walk out when asked about his role in the guerrilla
campaign that has rattled big business, enraged Tony Blair and almost
brought Britain's biggest animal testing laboratory to its knees.
And then Greg Avery walks through the door, slightly chubby in a
sensible shirt and fleece, looking like an accountant on dress-down
Friday.
Avery, 38, is the mouthpiece and leading light of Stop Huntingdon
Animal Cruelty (Shac), the group that has waged a seven-year campaign
to close down Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS) in Cambridgeshire, a
company that uses animals in pharmaceutical research. Since attracting
the attention of Avery and friends, HLS has fallen from the London and
New York stock exchanges, had loans called in from its bankers (the
Bank of England, under pressure from the government, is now the only
bank that will hold its account) and watched as shareholders, afraid
of being accused of complicity in animal cruelty, have haemorrhaged
away.
...
"I thought that was something I'd like to get involved in - I was
about 15 at the time - and a friend at school had a contact so we went
along to a hunt in Cheshire. As it happened, the weather was bad and
the hunt was cancelled but there was a demo against an ICI animal
research laboratory near Audley Edge, so we went to that instead."
In hunting terms, that was Avery's blooding. Protesters raided the lab
and climbed on the roof. He remained an activist for the next 13
years. Then, in 1996, he heard of a campaign against Consort Bio
Services kennels in Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire, which bred beagles
for animal research, and decided to become involved.
...
We have had two hours of surprisingly candid conversation and now the
scourge of the pharmaceutical industry is ready to leave. He knows
many people oppose what he stands for, but he says he would rather
"educate" them than enter into conflict with them. "Whatever you think
of us," he says, "whether you like us and think we're the equivalent
of Mary Poppins, or whether you regard us as mad extremists, you have
to admit one thing - what we do works".
--
full story: http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,1787388,00.html
|
