It is indubitability that the laboratory animals have been widely used in biomedical research as an important material or tool for improving human health. The advent of new scientific tools such as genetically manipulated rodents and mapping of the mouse genome has resulted in the use of reduced numbers of larger animals and in explosively growing populations of rodents (especially mice) in advanced countries current years. Nowadays, the laboratory animals are more and more important than anytime in the past.

Chinese government is applying herself to reforming the living conditions and improving the human health along with economic development. The fact is a great progress has been made in the field of laboratory animal science in China during the past two decades. Many national or local laws and rules of laboratory animal have been promulgated, and national standards of laboratory animal have been put in practice in 1994 and was revised in 2001 which is according to the standards of advanced countries. Several national laboratory animal resources were set up for resources achieving and assuring the quality are same as international standard. At the same time, the policy of license which is drawn according to Regulation for the Administration of Affairs Concerning Experimental Animals have been executed compulsively in animal care, use and employee include manager, technician, investigator and animal caretakers in laboratory animal science in the past.

In China, there are approximate 300 breeding facilities or Center of laboratory animal, and there are more than 2500 organizations (i.e. universities, institutes, pharmacy, hospitals, CDC and so on )are at work on animal use directly. The total number of laboratory animals is about 9-11 millions used for research every year. Animal species used in common include mouse, rat, hamster, guinea pig, rabbit, dog, monkey, mini-pig, sheep, gerbil, African hoptoad and so on. The number of mice and rats used for research has been increased more than 30% during the past two decades.

China is a developing country, although a great progress has been made in the field of laboratory animal science during the past two decades, we still have a long way to catch up with developed countries, especially new animal resources developing, preservation, sharing and continue to improve health care and gain biomedical knowledge in the 21st century utilizing animal models.