Animal rights campaigners plan a 24-hour hunger strike outside the Oxfordshire home of Home Secretary Jack Straw tonight.

Activists plan to protest in Minster Lovell, near Witney, on behalf of fellow campaigner Barry Horne, who was jailed for 18 years for offences linked to animal liberation.

Horne is 42 days into a hunger strike in prison because he claims the Government has broken promises over a ban on animal testing for alcohol and tobacco.

Niel Hansen, spokesman for the Animals Betrayed Coalition, said: "This will be a peaceful symbolic protest involving about ten people. We have written to the Home Office and tried to have meetings with them but with little success. All we want the Government to do is to stick to pre-election promises."

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