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EU scientists defend animal research
In a highly unusual step, the Scientific Steering Committee set up to advise the European Commission's Directorate General Sanco (Health and Consumer Protection), has issued a statement to "raise awareness of the Commission Services about the implications that would result from a complete disappearance of non-human primate research facilities".
The 16-member scientific steering committee, which has members from across the EU, is so worried by mounting opposition from pressure groups and some MEPs to research using non-human primates that it has warned of EU scientists having to rely on research done elsewhere, in countries where they would be unable to control standards of animal welfare.
Scientists at the Institut Pasteur, Paris, and the Biomedical Primate Research Centre in Rijswijk, the Netherlands, are known to have raised concerns with committee members. The probability of animal rights demonstrations has also caused problems for Cambridge University's proposed new research centre into brain diseases, where there would be primate experiments. The timing of the statement is undoubtedly also linked to the prospect of wide-ranging discussions over the proposed revision of the EU Directive concerning the welfare of laboratory animals.
Members of the committee said, in a statement issued on 8 April, that "unnecessary and duplicated or redundant research using non-human primates should be avoided at all costs, that the welfare conditions of the animals should be optimal, that for each research proposal it should be verified that no alternative is available and that it is ethically justified". But they considered that "for certain experiments there are no alternatives to the use of non-human primates".
They recommended the drawing up of a comprehensive list of research areas where well-maintained non-human primate research facilities were needed, adding "Ideally such a list should be developed and maintained within the overall context of the need for animal experiments in general".