The campaign Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC) was set up at the end of 1999 by a group of activists who had successfully closed down lab animal breeders, Consort kennels and Hillgrove cat farm. Both of these campaigns ended with the businesses closing down and hundreds of animals being safely rehomed instead of tortured in laboratories. In 1996 SHAC started a campaign against Consort kennels near Hereford. Over eight hundred beagles were kept at the kennels waiting to be sold to labs like Huntingdon Life Sciences (HLS). The campaign was intense, involving daily demonstrations, national demonstrations and regular all night vigils. During the campaign three rescue operations took place seeing 26 beagles go free to safe and loving homes. After just ten months of campaigning they could take no more pressure and the kennels closed in July 1997. A total of 200 beagles were successfully rehomed following the closure. To strike a sombre note we must never forget that it was Huntingdon Life Sciences who bought all the breeding beagles from Consort before they closed. In September 1997 the campaign moved swiftly against the last remaining UK breeder of cats for vivisection, Hillgrove farm near Witney, Oxfordshire run by the obnoxious Christopher and Katherine Brown. Hillgrove sold kittens worldwide for experiments from ten days old and held over 1000 cats in windowless sheds at the back of the farm. The scale of the campaign really begun to take off at this point seeing many ...