Reward now stands at £15,000

We can announce today that the reward for information leading to the conviction of an animal abuser at Oxford University has been increased once again. Appalled at the treatment of animals inside Oxford University's research laboratories, a SPEAK supporter recently pledged £5,000 to the fund set up in order to bring to justice the criminals being protected by the University. The reward for information leading to the conviction of an animal abuser at the university now stands at £15,000.

The leak of information from a source both at the Home Office and the University itself has highlighted the appalling treatment of primates at Oxford University. What makes the situation even more obscene is the fact that both the police and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) are actively protecting leading professors at Oxford University from prosecution, despite the fact that they are blatantly breaching animal welfare laws.

Current animal welfare laws - woefully inadequate at best at protecting laboratory animals from the excesses of their tormentors - are routinely flouted by staff working inside British laboratories, a fact corroborated by footage taken by undercover investigators working inside animal research establishments in the UK, whether at Huntingdon Life Sciences, Cambridge University or Oxford, where a leading professor in the Dept of Experimental Psychology allowed a primate on which he was experimenting to experience extreme and prolonged suffering because he viewed her as an 'asset'.

It is an indictment of the society in which we live that sentient beings can be allowed to suffer, and that those who inflict that suffering are encouraged to do so by those who lavish them with large grants and academic awards. Yet the irony is that if an individual causes similar suffering to a sentient creature outside the laboratory, they are vilified for their behaviour and can receive a custodial sentence.

The SPEAK campaign has reached the conclusion that putting any faith in the police or CPS to uphold the law is futile. We believe that their agenda is not one of upholding the law, but rather a question of protecting leading figures in the vivisection industry. The two-tier system of justice that operates in this country sees legal campaigns dragged through the courts for no better reason than that they are effectively highlighting the abuses perpetuated by the vivisection industry, whilst the real law-breakers - the vivisectors who are clearly breaking the law - are protected and given free reign to continue with their barbaric excesses.

We at SPEAK envisage that the £15,000 reward currently offered will increase in the coming months. Everyone has their price, and sooner or later someone will come forward with the information needed to prosecute a leading professor at Oxford University. The question is not IF it will happen, it's WHEN. Then we will see who are the real criminals.