This decision will have a deeply damaging effect on the search for the alleviation of devastating disorders

Cambridge University

Senior officers said the laboratory was likely to attract the type of protest that has been staged outside Huntingdon Life Sciences, which is sited a short distance along the A14 trunk route.

One man was jailed last year for an attack with a wooden stave on the director of the centre.

Animal Aid opposed plans for the laboratory at the council meeting and expressed "delight" at the decision.

The university confirmed that some testing on animals would have taken place at the centre.

A spokeswoman said: "Research methods are continually evolving and while new methods have enabled scientists and medical researchers to reduce work involving animals to a minimum, some of this work must continue if we are to make essential life-saving advances in medicine."

A spokesman for the council said they also accepted that the work proposed for the laboratory would have been in the national interest.

But he added that although this "outweighed" harm to the green belt, "it considered that the site is unacceptable because of the risk to public safety".