A woman aged 85 has begun a 48-hour hunger strike in protest against an animal experimentation laboratory planned for Oxford University.

Seasoned animal rights campaigner Joan Court, took up residence outside the laboratory construction site in South Parks Road at 10am on July 14.

Mrs Court, who has a professional background in nursing and midwifery, has been an instrumental anti-vivisection campaigner for 25-years and earlier this year helped pressure group SPEAK win a battle to scrap a multi-million pound primate research laboratory at Cambridge University.

Oxford University's £18 million facility has been fraught with controversy since plans to house animals and experiment on them were first unveiled five years ago.

The university has said 98 per cent of the experiments conducted there would be on rodents with the rest being primates, fish, ferrets and amphibians, however animal rights protesters have vowed to do everything in their power to stop the project going ahead.