Legislation, social licence and primate research

Abstract

“The end of monkey research?” ask Melissa Suran and Howard Wolinsky (2009) against a background of growing concern over the use of primates in research. indeed, the one factor that might have the biggest impact on primate research in Europe is the revision of Directive 86/609, which will greatly affect the work of many scientists. is therefore in the interest of all researchers to get an unbiased picture of what is happening in the legislative realm; something that the article unfortunately does not provide. The far‐reaching measures for regulating primate research that Suran and Wolinsky outline in their article come from the European Commission's proposal to revise the Directive on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes (86/609/EEC), which was presented in November 2008 (EC, 2008). This proposal has since progressed to the next entity in the legislative procedure, the European Parliament (EP), which published its First Reading Report in May 2009 (EP, 2009). The EP report introduced amendments that changed the original text on a number …