BE PREPARED

Don't be under any doubts, Oxford University's new animal lab on South Parks Road will be opening shortly. Due to the fantastic effort of SPEAK supporters the lab will be opening over two years late, has cost five times the original price at around £100 million. Its staff have been exposed whilst conducting cruel and barbaric experiments on innocent creatures. SPEAK have taken on and not been beaten by one of the most influential institutions in this country. The effect of the SPEAK campaign has reverberated well beyond Oxford, and indeed beyond the UK, giving out the message to other institutions and companies all over the world that trying to build new animal labs would be a very costly, very time consuming and very unwise.

With the opening of the lab will come the start of the next phase in the campaign against animal torture at Oxford University. Whereas in the last four years the demonstrations have been held against the building of the lab, in the future the protests will be held directly against those who are mutilating and brutalising the animals inside the lab. They will be able to see us, they will be able to hear us and they will not be able to hide.

The true fact is that Oxford University's real problems are about to begin - their new lab is right next to one of the major arterial routes in the city and not in the middle of a field in the middle of nowhere protected by high fences and razor wire; quite the contrary.

Even despite the fact that the SPEAK campaign has never been involved in illegal activities against the university, the reality is that the university will be forced to maintain their current, very expensive security standards. Inevitably, this will prove to be one of their biggest challenges, especially if they have to continue at the same rate they've been paying up until now, which at the beginning of 2007 was about £4.5 million. The situation looks very grim indeed for the university: since December 2007 Thames Valley Police have been cut off from receiving extra money from the Government to deal with the protests. This seems a far cry from the rosy picture the university continue to try and paint for the public.

We ask all SPEAK supporters to be prepared for the news of the opening of the animal lab at any time. At SPEAK we await the next phase in this fight against ignorance, arrogance and down right cruelty with even greater determination to end vivisection at Oxford.