Just last week (week beginning June 23), the British Heart Foundation (BHF) found itself in a deeply uncomfortable position as a result of Animal Aid uncovering a shocking experiment that involved pigs being deliberately made to suffer heart attacks, then subjected to several other cruel and destructive ‘procedures’ before they were killed. The scientific paper describing the experiment declared that it had been ‘sponsored’ by the BHF. And we uncovered other evidence suggesting that the charity financially supported the experiment and/or a leading member of the team who conducted it. A national newspaper planned to feature this latest exposé as an exclusive, but it was dropped at the last minute, possibly due to a conflicting piece (a positive story relating to the BHF) appearing in the same edition. Within days, a second national newspaper agreed to run the exposé instead, but when approached for comment, the BHF provided a statement emphatically distancing itself from the experiment, and the newspaper dropped the story.
However, there can be no doubting the BHF’s record of funding animal experiments, and we are more determined than ever to expose such activities to wider public scrutiny. Animal Aid has embarked on a new, far-reaching phase of research. Watch this space!