The endless battle between Oxford University and animal rights groups continues. In the latest instalment, the group Speak says that it has discovered where the builders of a ?20 million animal testing laboratory are being housed. Intimidation by extremists already forced work on the facility to cease for 17 months. Speak now appears to be threatening to harass the workers, many of whom already work in balaclavas so that they cannot be identified.

Speak feels that the builders are engaged in a thoroughly unethical undertaking. It has issued a statement which says: “At the end of a day after building a monument to cruelty and a fraudulent scientific practice, they are able to relax and enjoy themselves… Do they give a moment’s thought for the animals that will die in their thousands, imprisoned in tiny cages. Alone they will suffer; in fear they will die — do they care? Of course not; they are on triple wages.”

In the meantime, the remains of an 82-year-old British woman which had been exhumed and stolen by extremists agitating against a guinea pig farm, have been reburied. They were exhumed and stolen two years ago as part of a campaign of intimidation against the owners of the farm.