It’s good to hear Joan Ryan, the new Home Office Minister with responsibility for regulation of animal experiments, making public statements such as: 

"Animal research and testing has played a part in almost every medical breakthrough of the last century. It has saved hundreds of millions of lives worldwide, and is vital to our National Health Service.”

She was responding to news that the Council of Europe (covering about 50 European countries) have adopted revised guidelines for the housing and care of laboratory animals.

The main effect of these guidelines should be to bring other European countries in line with the already high lab animal welfare standards that we have in the UK. They are also likely to be incorporated into the revised EC Directive 86/609 on animal experimentation, which is wending its long and weary way through the European political process.