Sent A.L. Bacharach to A.S. Parkes, 8th April 1947 (FD 1/383).
8 Apr 1947
Description:

'My dear Parkes,

I don't know when the Advisory Committee of the new Bureau is going to meet, but here are two points, addressed to you as its Chairman, for consideration, one of them relatively unimportant and the other affecting general policy.

First, about the name of the Bureau. The more I think of the phrase "experimental animals", the less I like it. Apart from anything else, it is not logically correct, because the animals are not strictly speaking experimental, except in so far as they carry out experiments on the unfortunate people who try to produce and tend them! I don't think the expression can possibly bear that interpretation in the minds of most people. Further, even if the phrase were a correct one, it is much too wide, because it must include pigs and goats and sheep and cattle, in so far as experiments are carried out on them. I believe that problems connected with the larger mammals fall specifically into Nichols's province at Aberystwyth and that the Bureau will have nothing directly to do with them. In these circumstances, is not the phrase "laboratory animals" more accurate than the suggested one? Admittedly the present suggested one comes from the Conference and Standing Committee, but it was adopted somewhat hurriedly, and that is no reason for keeping it if we think we can find a better one.

... I am more and more impressed with the need for having these central foundation stocks kept in at least two different centres where fully qualified geneticists would be responsible for maintaining not merely the strains, but their purity.'