Benjamin Franklin

I'm off to meet the Pfizer swine team in Brussels for an announcement relating to that sector. I will of course appraise you of any developments in the Animal Pharm daily breaking news alert as soon as I can.

I look forward to meeting Greg Otto and his team, I last met them in New York when Pfizer was announcing the global release of Improvac. They took out for a very memorable meal in a restaurant right overlooking Times Square.

Pfizer is good at choosing interesting restaurants. Back in November I had a very enjoyable couple of days at Pfizer's Paris headquarters for the launch of Convenia. We were taken out to Le Procope, apparently Paris' oldest café. According to a plaque on the wall, Rousseau, Biron, Diderot, Voltaire, and Verlaine cooked up ideas for the French revolution there. Apparently another American was also an habitué - Benjamin Franklin – who's death in 1790 caused the café to go into mourning for three days.

Both of these trips were thanks to Pr man Mike Keeler. I'll let you know what Mr Keeler has organized for this event when I get back.

I'd also like to pay tribute to our new deputy editor Sita Shah, who – as I'm away for our press day (Tuesday) is putting the whole issue to bed in just her third week in the job. Sita is a very experienced journalist from our sister paper in the human health sector _ Scrip, which many of you will know. I wish her the best of luck over the next couple of days …