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Italy may soon become the European country with the most restrictive legislation on animal experimentation, if a draft law due for discussion in the Senate July 11th is approved in its current form. The Italian government says that it considers the draft “a good balance point”, but scientists fear that the restrictions would hamper biomedical research and damage the country's pharmaceutical industry. The draft being discussed in Italy contains several prohibitions that are not in the parent EU legislation, and that were not part of Italy’s regulations before the directive was adopted. It bans the breeding of primates, cats and dogs for laboratory use, and requires the government to impose “sufficiently cautious” norms for the authorized use of transgenic animals. It also bans experimentation on “anthropomorphic apes”, cats and dogs, unless the tests are mandatory for new drugs to be approved, or are aimed at “improving human health”. Finally, it prohibits all experiments without anaesthesia that cause pain to an animal. For more information, please follow the link above to the article.