France is trying to tempt Charles River, the American animal breeding
company, to set up a European ‘monkey farm’ near Marseilles. According to
Pierre Tambourin, research director at the Curie Institute in Paris, the
company wants to open a primate centre in Europe, either in Italy or Spain.
But France is keen to play host to the centre.
The French research minister Hubert Curien said last week that by the
end of 1993 all animals should come from approved breeding centres. He also
announced plans for a new body to make spot checks in research centres and
to introduce alternatives to laboratory animals.
According to an official at the research ministry, Charles River could
be offered a site near Marseille which belongs to the national research
organisation CNRS. In exchange, French research institutes would be guaranteed
a regular supply of monkeys from the centre. The CNRS is reported to be
less enthusiastic about giving up the site.
Researchers in government-run institutes are worried that the difficulties
in obtaining primates may hold up essential research. ‘If France does not
breed monkeys, an activity dominated by the US and Japan, it will soon be
in a difficult situation,’ warns Pierre Buser, author of a report on animal
experiments for the Academy of Science.
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French researchers used just over 2000 monkeys in experiments in 1990.
Monkeys imported from licensed breeding centres cost around £1600.
‘It is true the decrease in the use of primates has a great deal to do with,
their cost,’ acknowledged one specialist.
France has only one breeding centre for primates, run by the Louis Pasteur
University in Strasbourg. But even if the centre is extended it cannot hope
to meet the needs of national research laboratories. To make up the shortfall,
France contacted breeding centres in the former Soviet Union just over a
year ago, but has not pursued those contacts since the recent political
turmoil.
The offer of a free site and a market for its animals, however, may
not be enough to win France the proposed breeding centre. A senior executive
at Charles River says the company would not consider the venture without
European aid. French officials say the company wants ‘substantial’ aid from
the European Community both in setting up and in operating the centre.
But, science officials at the European Commission would prefer to buy
animals from Russia and Poland rather than set up a new centre in the Community.
This would not necessarily rule out a European centre. Officials more concerned
with regional development could still push to have the centre in Europe-but
probably in Spain or Italy.
Marseille has another drawback as a site for Charles River. Animal rights
groups are growing increasingly active in France and security must be a
factor in choosing the location of the breeding centre. According
to Tambourin, the isolated nature of the CNRS site ‘accentuates security
problems’.
![Astronomers have long known that understanding how star clusters come to be is key to unlocking other secrets of galactic evolution. Stars form in clusters, created when clouds of gas collapse under gravity. As more and more stars are born in a collapsing cloud, strong stellar winds, harsh ultraviolet radiation and the supernova explosions of massive stars eventually disperse the cloud, and their light can bear down on other star-forming regions in the galaxy. This process is called stellar feedback, and it means that most of the gas in a galaxy never gets used for star formation. Researching how star clusters develop can answer questions about star formation at a galactic scale. Now, the state of the art has been further developed with both Hubble and Webb working together to provide a broad-spectrum view of thousands of young star clusters. An international team of astronomers has pored over images of four nearby galaxies from the FEAST observing programme (#1783), trying to solve this mystery. Their results show that it is the most massive star clusters that clear away their gaseous shroud the fastest, and begin lighting their galaxy the earliest. The team identified nearly 9000 star clusters in the four galaxies in different evolutionary stages: young clusters just starting to emerge from their natal clouds of gas, clusters that had partially dispersed the gas (both from Webb images), and fully unobstructed clusters visible in optical light (found in Hubble images). With Webb???s ability to peer inside the gas clouds, they were able to then estimate the mass and age of each cluster from its light spectrum. This image shows a section of one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51), one of the four galaxies studied in this work, as seen by Webb???s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The thick clumps of star-forming gas are shown here in red and orange, representing infrared light emitted by ionised gas, dust grains, and complex molecules such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Within these gas complexes, each tens or hundreds of light years across, Webb reveals the dense, extremely bright clusters of massive stars that have just recently formed. The countless stars strewn across the arm of the galaxy, many of which would be invisible to our eyes behind layers of dust, are also laid bare in infrared light. [Image description: A large, long portion of one of the spiral arms in galaxy M51. Red-orange, clumpy filaments of gas and dust that stretch in a chain from left to right comprise the arm. Shining cyan bubbles light up parts of the gas clouds from within, and gaps expose bright star clusters in these bubbles as glowing white dots. The whole image is dotted with small stars. A faint blue glow around the arm colours the otherwise dark background.]](https://images.newscientist.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/13114322/SEI_296271016.jpg)
