In 1989 the British Veterinary Association; the Fund for the Replacement of Animals in Medical Experimentation; the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the Universities Federation for Animal Welfare set up a working party to run a series of workshops on the ways in which common scientific procedures could be refined to minimize any pain or distress caused to laboratory animals. Any reduction in these adverse effects not only has the potential to improve the welfare of the animals; it could also improve the quality of scientific research, in that suffering can often result in physiological and other changes which are likely to mask or interfere with the experimental results.