China's largest laboratory-animal breeding center has been built in Shanghai and is expected to produce more than 300,000 mice and rats for laboratory use each year.

The Shanghai Laboratory Animals Center (SLAC) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences has invested more than 30 million yuan (US$3.6 million) in the center's first phase infrastructure and equipment, according to China Daily.

The center, covering an area of 44,667 square meters in Songjiang County, Shanghai, will focus on the research, exploitation, maintenance and breeding of high quality laboratory animals for biomedical research.

Xu Ping, director of the center, was quoted as saying that only by using animals that are bred and raised according to internationally recognized standards, can scientists get correct research results. So the quality of a country's laboratory animals are of crucial importance to its scientific research.

The center has accepted more than 40 rodent strains and will introduce 60 more in the next three years.

"We aim to join the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International in three years," said Xu, adding that the center will concentrate on the welfare of laboratory animals.

"We adopt a Three-R policy, reduction, refinement and replacement, which is to say, great efforts will be made to reduce the number of laboratory animals used, improve their living conditions and use lower forms of life instead of rats and mice for research," Xu said.

(Eastday.com.cn 07/23/2001)