Heather - Yes, I do think it is a good thing for the quarantine laws to be lifted. Pets can already go back and forth across the channel, so why not further afield. As long as the strict criteria is upheld that is.
It was real scary, wasn`t it, the death of the Scottish man from rabies? He was a conservation worker who contracted it from a European bat bite, and I believe that the tests regulary done on these bats have shown that it is a rare for them to have it. The only query I have on his death is, why, he hadn`t he had the vaccine, or whatever it is, as a protection as he did such a lot of work with these creatures? Maybe because it is such rare thing to happen he thought he was safe.