The European Commission last week unveiled a proposal to reform the regulation of scientific experiments that use animals.

The commission's suggested update to the 20-year-old 86/609/EEC directive will now be considered by the European Parliament, probably in 2009. However, business and academic groups are pushing for a number of changes, voicing concern over the draft's proposals to limit the reuse of the same animal in a series of experiments, and to curb the use of specimens captured from the wild.

Primate researchers are particularly worried by elements of the proposed directive that could prevent any basic research on non-human primates that does not relate to either the survival of the species or to serious clinical conditions in humans. All experiments on great apes would be banned, except during extreme circumstances such as pandemics.