Fur World Magazine
January 8, 2007

Now animal testing will be out-sourced To China and India.

Saying animal activism is creating economic problems for laboratories in the U.S. that use animals in medical and drug research, Glenn Rice, chief executive of Bridge Pharmaceuticals of San Francisco has begun outsourcing the work to China, where he has found scientists are plentiful and inexpensive.

He also discovered that aggressive activists, viewed as law breakers there, are dealt with quickly and convincingly. There is an organization in Beijing called The Chinese Association for Protection of Small Animals, and its director, Lu Di, 75, says she views animal testing as
inevitable, and her group is focused on encouraging laboratories and universities to use the most humane methods in handling their primates and dogs.

Rice has established a facility in Beijing's Zhongguancun Life Sciences Park, which is becoming a world center for biotechnology, and says this kind of work goes along with the goals of the Chinese government, which has heard the expression "The race to the bottom," and wants to make new ventures about quality rather than quantity. So much so that it gave him many incentives, including a five-year tax holiday.

Rice now commutes weekly between San Francisco and Beijing, and says there are so many advantages that he expects drug giants like Pfizer, Novartis, Eli Lily and Roche to follow suit.

"We can do the work for about half what it costs in the U.S. or Europe,' Rice explained, "and there is an ample supply of necessary animals.

Lower costs means we can also work on treatments or cures for the so-called orphan diseases that affect small numbers of people and for which research hitherto has not been cost effective."