UK’s leading lab supplier launches investigation into N-word slurs on products

Exclusive: Following enquiries from The Independent, Scientific Laboratory Supplies launched an internal probe

(PA)

The UK’s largest independent supplier of laboratory materials has removed an N-word racist slur describing some of its products and launched an audit into language used within its organisation following enquiries by The Independent.

Scientific Laboratory Supplies (SLS) advertised cells belonging to people of African ancestry with racially offensive terms in their description.

Skin embryo cells, liver cancer cells and breast cancer cells were referred to as ‘Human n***oid skin embryo’, ‘human n***oid hepatocyte carcino’ and ‘n***oid human breast carcinoma’.

N***oid is widely accepted to be a racist term that’s used to describe Black people.

Coined by colonialists and particularly common in archaic science texts, it is part of a discredited human classification system which wrongly asserts that race is a scientific construct rather than a social one and that people of African ancestry are genetically inferior.

The company said the offensive terms came about due to a data processing oversight, whereby SLS loaded a file from a third-party supplier without checking the language.

As a distributor of laboratory products, SLS says it has over half a million items on its system and the vast majority of product descriptions are provided by suppliers.

The products in question were created on its system in 2009 and 2023 and were provided in data files by the manufacturer Sigma-Aldrich and Merck (Sigma-Aldrich was later acquired by Merck KGaA in 2015 in a multi-billion dollar deal).

N***oid is widely accepted to be a racist term that’s used to describe Black people. (Screenshot)

SLS Managing Director, Ian Roulstone, told The Independent: “SLS is a business that is proud of its ethics and integrity so we were very disappointed to find that this terminology was used anywhere within our business systems.

“I would like to ensure you that your email prompted emergency action at the highest level in SLS, with the immediate formation of a team of senior managers and Board members from across our business and the establishment of an action plan which both removes the offensive term and puts in place a robust system to ensure that there is no repeat of this in the future.

“Whilst we do not believe it is in the interests of science to remove the products from sale, they should certainly be presented in a way that does not cause any offence so on behalf of us all at SLS, I do sincerely apologise for any offence caused by our failure to screen out this terminology.”

Products from Merck KGaA are predominantly directly shipped to customers by the manufacturer and SLS only ever sold this product to one customer who purchased it once in 2011 and then again in 2012, according to a spokesperson.

As a result of The Independent’s enquiries, SLS, which operates across the UK and has an office in Kenya, says it’s now overhauled its internal processes to include a systematic review of product files to ensure that offensive slurs do not appear in its inventory again.

This process will cover its entire catalogue of over 600,000 products, a spokesperson confirmed.

As a result of The Independen t’s enquiries, SLS says it’s now overhauled its internal processes to include a systematic review of product files to ensure that offensive slurs do not appear in its inventory again. (Screenshot)

Cell culture lines, across a range of ethnicities, are widely used in scientific research to better understand the human body, improve human health and ensure that drugs work correctly across different groups.

Merck KGaA, a pharmaceutical giant based in Germany, develops and produces medicines, vaccines and therapies, plus supplies biochemical material to researchers around the globe.

The company, which describes itself as “a leading supplier to the global Life Science industry”, has been approached by The Independent for comment.

The development comes after The Independent uncovered racist slurs being used in a slew of official UK government documents, the Met Office and the Royal Collection of jewels, last year.

Addressing both uses of the slur in the documents, political activist Professor Gus John told The Independent: “Racism and the language of racism continues to exist in structural, cultural, institutional and personal manifestations because Britain stubbornly refuses to deal with the legacy of empire and of colonialism.

“N***oid .... does not connote a geographical place or region, but a people whose standing in the human realm has been defined as primitive, undeveloped, backward and not as human as the rest of humanity, thus qualifying to be used as chattels, or for experimentation by eugenicists.”