We wish a Happy New Year to all our supporters. For those who have been away, or just enjoying the break, there have been a few snippets of news around.

Most prominent has been the media reports of the denial of a knighthood to Professor Colin Blakemore in the new year honours list. There has been plenty of speculation based on a memo which was leaked on a previous occasion which suggested this was because of his outspoken support for animal research. However, as far as we can make out, little is known about the reasoning this time around.

Colin Blakemore is the new Chair of RDS as of December last year, and we have no doubt he will continue to do excellent work, both as a leading scientist and in explaining more widely why there is still a need to use animals in research.

Another story which got some media interest was the announcement by the British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection (BUAV) of an increase in animal testing for so-called ‘health foods’, reported for example in the Times. As is so often the case, without the relevant facts to hand, it is difficult to comment on the detail. It seems only some of this research is carried out in the UK.

This is one of those cases where the lack of information available to the public can be just as frustrating for RDS as it is to the animal rights groups. It would be nice to match up the claims of the antivivisection groups against the relevant project licence abstracts on the Home Office website. Unfortunately, a lack of user-friendly interface means searching the abstracts is far from straightforward.

We believe 2008 will see the continued demise of animal rights extremism, and the emergence of a more sophisticated and nuanced debate about animal research in the UK instead. Watch this space!