On the eight-acre site near Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire, behind reinforced gates and security cameras, approximately 2,000 beagle puppies are bred by MBR Acres each year for a singular purpose – to be shipped to laboratories at sixteen to twenty weeks old, small and trusting, where they enthusiastically greet strangers. They are chosen not for any biological advantage but because they are, in the clinical language of the industry, ‘compliant.’
Outside those gates, in all weather, at all hours, the campaigners and activists of Camp Beagle maintain their vigil. They have been there since June 2021, making theirs the longest-lasting animal rights protest camp of its kind in British history. From their encampment, they watch the entrance that they have named ‘the Gates of Hell.’
Inside, the facility operates under licences granted by the Home Office. According to official documentation, ex-breeding dogs, studs, and puppies may be bled up to four times monthly – or up to fifteen percent of their circulating blood volume drawn, typically from the jugular vein. There are also terminal procedures such as exsanguination, and cardiac puncture, or bleeding from the heart. These excruciating procedures are conducted to customers’ specific requirements – the blood must be barbiturate-free and fresh, never frozen. The dogs are also regularly intubated.
In 2024, MBR Acres received a five-year renewal to continue these harrowing operations.
The Economics of Compliance
The protesters know the details of these licences because they have studied them. They know about the live donor colony. They know about the terminal bleedings. They know that beagles constitute ninety-five percent of all dogs used in scientific and regulatory testing across Britain, and they know why – because beagles are small, because they are gentle, because they trust humans even when humans do not deserve that trust.
What keeps a place like MBR Acres – owned by the American corporation Marshall BioResources – in operation is not merely the research institutions that purchase its puppies. It is the intricate web of ordinary commerce that surrounds it – the supermarkets that deliver groceries to its staff, the energy companies that supply its gas, the waste management firms that haul away what remains when the experiments are done, the cremation companies that dispose of small bodies.
But over recent years, animal rights campaigners and activists have been pulling on these threads.
The Boycott
The supplier boycott campaign began in earnest in 2024, and its tactics are straightforward – emails, phone calls and protests outside supplier premises. The approach is proving remarkably effective.
Morrisons supermarket was photographed delivering groceries to the site in June 2025. After campaigners petitioned head office, the deliveries stopped. Pets at Home, learning that JRS, a bedding supplier they contracted with, also supplied MBR Acres, threatened to pull their contract. JRS joined the boycott. So did Acourt Group and Binder, waste management firms. So did Northern Energy, Bedford Fuels, Greenarc Energy, and FloGas. So did Stratton, a facilities management company.
To date, at least ten companies have signed pledges to cease working with the facility.
The case of Avanti Gas became particularly instructive. The company initially told campaigners it had ceased supplying MBR Acres. Then, one night, Camp Beagle activists recorded an unmarked tanker making a delivery under cover of darkness. Following an intensive investigation and mounting public scrutiny, Avanti finally confirmed the vehicle was theirs, and terminated their contract with the breeding facility in May 2025.
Monarch Gas replaced Avanti, but after public pressure, Monarch terminated their contract at the end of June. By current estimates, MBR Acres has approximately six weeks of gas supply remaining.
The Cost of Watching
The vigil outside MBR Acres has not been without cost—and not only to the protesters who have weathered years outside those gates. According to Freedom of Information Act responses, Cambridgeshire Constabulary spent between £1.5 million and £2 million policing the Camp Beagle protest from its inception through 2024. Half a million pounds went to police overtime alone.
In February 2025, a High Court ruling provided some relief for the activists. A judge declined to continue an exclusion zone around the facility, allowing Camp Beagle to continue its peaceful protests.
The Silent Partner
Of all the companies caught in the widening net of the MBR Acres supplier boycott, none has faced more sustained pressure than Stericycle, the American medical waste disposal giant. Stericycle, activists claim, cremates the bodies of beagle puppies bred for vivisection.
For eighteen months, the company’s facility in Bournemouth, located next to the Royal Bournemouth Hospital, has been subjected to weekly protests. In August 2024, activists occupied the entrance. In February 2025, activists targeted Stericycle‘s Leeds office, gluing the padlock of the company’s car park.
Throughout the campaign, Stericycle has remained silent. Unlike Morrisons, unlike Avanti Gas, unlike Pets at Home, Stericycle has refused to publicly engage with the controversy. The company’s website still emphasizes that it holds itself to the ‘highest ethical standards.’ Many now view this claim as deeply hypocritical.
The protesters outside Stericycle‘s facilities have learned patience. They know that silence, maintained long enough, becomes its own kind of answer.
The Rescue
In the early morning hours of December 2022, activists from Animal Rising entered the MBR facility and freed eighteen beagles. It was not the first such action – five beagles had been liberated in June of that year – but it could prove the most consequential.
The activists were arrested for suspected burglary and aggravated trespass. Beginning in December 2025, twenty rescuers will appear in court across five separate trials scheduled through to March 2026 in relation to both the June and December rescues. If found guilty, they face potential sentences of up to ten years in prison.
The prosecution’s case is straightforward – the activists violated property rights and broke the law. But the defendants have chosen not to simply plead guilty and accept punishment. They have decided – in essence – to put vivisection itself on trial.
They plan to call expert witnesses to testify about the scientific validity – or lack thereof – of animal testing, about the psychological and physical suffering of laboratory dogs, and about the availability of superior non-animal research methods.
The question these trials are likely to pose to the juries is this: Can property law apply to sentient beings? Does saving lives from certain suffering justify breaking unjust laws? And should facilities like MBR Acres exist at all in a nation that prides itself on loving animals?
The Closing Net
There is a tightening that happens slowly, then all at once. For years, MBR Acres operated in the shadows of public consciousness – known to researchers, known to activists, unknown to most. Puppies were bred, shipped, used and killed, and the system perpetuated itself through public inertia and institutional momentum.
But something has shifted. Camp Beagle’s vigil, now in its fifth year, has proven that sustained attention can be maintained. The supplier boycott has demonstrated that even mundane commercial relationships can become untenable under scrutiny. One by one, the companies that enabled MBR Acres to function have been peeled away—energy suppliers, waste management, grocery deliveries, bedding suppliers. Each departure makes the next more likely, as remaining suppliers recognise they may soon find themselves in the crosshairs.
The gas supply, by current estimates, will last just over a month. What happens when it runs out? Will another supplier step forward, knowing they will immediately become the campaign’s primary target? Or will MBR Acres, for the first time, face the prospect of operating without heat, without power for essential equipment, without the infrastructure that industrial-scale animal breeding requires?
The pending trials, beginning this December, represent another pressure point. The defendants have transformed their legal jeopardy into a platform, refusing the script of remorseful criminals. By putting vivisection itself on trial, they ensure months of testimony about what happens inside facilities like MBR Acres – testimony that will be reported, discussed, shared. Public opinion on animal testing has already shifted dramatically – polls consistently show majority opposition to testing on dogs. The trials will force that abstract opposition into concrete confrontation with specific practices: terminal bleeding, cardiac puncture, weeks old puppies intubated and exsanguinated.
There is precedent for this kind of closure. Facilities that once seemed permanent fixtures have shuttered when the costs – financial, reputational, operational – became unsustainable. What the activists understand is that they need not storm the gates. They need only make it impossible for MBR Acres to function as a normal business.
And they are succeeding. The longest protest in British animal rights history has evolved into something more sophisticated than a vigil. It is an economic siege, a reputational campaign, and a moral tribunal all at once. The facility still operates, the puppies are still bred, but the net around MBR Acres grows tighter each month.
The protesters outside the Gates of Hell are still watching, still waiting. They have learned that patience, applied relentlessly, can be more powerful than any single dramatic action. They have learned that you can close a facility not by breaking down its doors, but by cutting the thousand threads that keep it operating – the gas deliveries, the grocery runs, the waste disposal, the silent complicity of ordinary commerce.
They believe they will see those gates close. Not today, perhaps not this year, but soon. The beagles inside, bred for their compliance, their smallness, their trust – the activists believe those dogs will be the last generation born at Wyton. That the trials will expose what has been hidden, that the boycott will sever what remains, that the vigil will outlast the facility it watches.
— © 2025 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer – Insta: @TheAfghanWriter
