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Animal Procedures Committee

My honourable friend the Minister of State for the Home Department (Joan Ryan) has made the following Written Ministerial Statement. In accordance with Section 20(5) of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986, I have placed the committee’s annual report for 2005 in the Library today. Among other things the report includes: the advice offered by the committee on project licence applications that were referred to the committee for advice; the work carried out by the committee’s sub-committees; the completion of the committee’s reviews, commissioned by the Home Office, of the annual statistical report on the use of animals in scientific procedures; and the committee’s work on the retrospective assessment of suffering and severity.