In August 1995 the Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Training (ANZCCART) held a two-day conference in Wellington, New Zealand on Farm Animals in Biomedical and Agricultural Research. The 14 papers together with their edited discussions - see advertisement on page 338 for details - have now been published. The material ranges from a keynote address on farm animals in biomedical and agricultural research, through to an ANZCCART student award paper on in vitro fertilization technologies in animals and humans, to discussions on consciousness and awareness in farm animals and on human accountability regarding animal use.

There has always been a difficulty in finding out possible funding sources for scientific work on refinement, reduction or replacement of animal experiments - the 3R alternatives. Barbara Orlans in her book In the Name of Science: Issues in Responsible Animal Experimentation (Oxford University Press, 1993) started a list of possible sources; this list was amplified and presented by Amelia Tarzi at the First World Congress on Alternatives and Animal Use in the Life Sciences, held in 1993 in Baltimore (USA). A new and expanded list under the authorship of Orlans and Tarzi has now been published as a directory by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. It contains the names, addresses, policies and sometimes indications of monies available of 59 organizations scattered across some 16 countries.

Over the last 30 or so years the selection pressures put upon farm livestock have been such that we now have a number of vastly ‘improved’ animals - improved in the sense that they have changed in size and shape, grow faster, produce more and are more economical to keep. The speed at which these changes have been brought about has increased as techniques such as artificial insemination and embryo transfer have been developed and used.

Considerable interest is currently being taken in the treatment of injured or diseased wildlife. The general public feels that something ought to be done to relieve the suffering. As a consequence various voluntary wildlife rehabilitation and treatment centres have been set up, veterinary surgeons have become skilled in treating wild animals and a substantial number of both serious and semi-popular publications on the subject have come on to the market.

Each year large numbers of puppies and kittens are taken to animal shelters and veterinary groups for euthanasia. These unwanted young animals are largely the result of the indiscriminate breeding of household dogs and cats. The surplus animals not killed by shelter personnel and/or by veterinarians are often abandoned or escape, and are the root cause of the stray and feral, dog and cat problem.

Each year the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) holds an Animal Welfare Forum. The subject of the 1995 meeting was the cat, and the full text of the eight papers presented at the Forum have now been published as part of Volume 208, Issue 4 (15 February 1996) of the Journal of the AVMA. The themes ranged from the origin and nature of the domestic cat (Joan Miller) to feral cats in the United Kingdom (Jenny Remfry). There were also contributions on feline behaviour and welfare (Gary Landsberg), new developments in feline vaccines (James Richards), population medicine and infectious diseases (Johnny Hoskins), cats and their people (R Lee Zasloff), surgical neutering and nonsurgical alternatives (Mark Bloomberg) and animal shelter issues (Carter Luke).