Should there be exceptions to the right of access to administrative documents concerning the use of animals for scientific purposes?

In a press release dated January 14, 2025, four academies (medicine, pharmacy, science and veterinary medicine) expressed their concern about the fact that the Ministry of Higher Education and Research had sent project authorization applications (using animals) to associations that had requested them.

What’s it all about?

When a research team plans to use live animals in a project scientific or educational project, it must submit an application for authorization to project (DAP), which will then be forwarded to the Ministry, which will issue an administrative authorization for experimentation – only if the animal experimentation ethics committee has previously issued a favorable opinion.

What’s in a DAP?

The file contains information on the scientific hypotheses and the course of the procedure project(s). But above all, it contains essential information on how the interests of the animals will be taken into account throughout the project process, in accordance with current regulations (see the “Legal” section of our website for articles on European regulations and regulations in the various EU member states): application of the 3Rs principle, application of anesthesia/analgesia, application of humane endpoints (level of suffering that requires either stopping procedure or killing the animal), choice of killing method…

What information can be made public?

Transcience applied for 18 DAP in 2022. On January 24, 2024, the Paris Administrative Court ruled that these documents could be disclosed, as long as all information relating to private life or business secrets was blacked out.

Implicitly targeted by the content of the four academies’ press release, Transcience responded with an open letter.