Animal rights protesters have lost their High Court battle to wear costumes spattered with fake blood.

Anti-vivisection activists sported the outfits while protesting outside a laboratory which breeds animals for medical research.

Yesterday, they failed to overturn a ban on wearing them when protesting outside premises owned by Harlan Laboratories UK, which has a site in Belton, near Loughborough.

Harlan had secured a High Court injunction last month, placing restrictions on the protests.

A judge yesterday agreed to relax some conditions, but refused to lift the ban on the bloodstained clothes.

Tim Lawson-Cruttenden, for Harlan, told Mrs Justice Nicola Davies the company's employees were entitled to "respect" as they went about their work, and that being confronted with blood-spattered campaigners amounted to harassment.

He told the court: "We find it very objectionable and potentially harassing when our workers come out of the factory gate – in which they have been working hard, lawfully and morally – to be faced with protesters accusing them of something they don't do, which is abusing animals and practising vivisection experiments on them.

"When you wear bloodstained clothing outside our premises, you are calling our workers animal abusers."

The protests by the National Anti-Vivisection Alliance (NAVA), and backed by Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (SHAC), began at Harlan offices in April.

NAVA spokesman Luke Steele told the judge: "Harlan Laboratories is involved in slaughtering animals at these sites and a number of animals are killed on site each year that cannot be sold.

"The bloodstained clothing is there to represent the fact that Harlan are involved in slaughtering animals and supplying them for medical research."

Mr Steele said the campaigners were exercising "the right of public protest".

"The freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having," he said.

Mr Lawson-Cruttenden told the court: "We breed animals. We have a very small research establishment but we don't conduct any vivisection.

"We have the right to respect. We are breeding animals for medical research, which is both legal and, we believe, moral."

Mrs Justice Davies said: "I accept that the defendants have a right to protest, but that must be balanced with other rights.

"The workers leaving the factory and seeing bloodstained clothing are capable of being caused harassment and distress."

Protests at each site have been limited to one per week but the judge allowed the number of protesters to increase from 20 to 25.

She also ruled demonstrations could last up to three hours, rather than two.

The injunction will remain in place until a full hearing on the case which is set for October.