One Voice is filing a complaint against Genclis for abuse of animals in laboratories

We have had access to the inspection report from the DDPP (the veterinarians from the Prefecture) following an administrative procedure by one of our team. This report mentions numerous minor and intermediate non-conformities, in particular inclined towards housing and environment (minor non-conformity following problems with materials, lighting, and temperature), the staff (intermediate non-conformity, insufficiencies in the set-up followed by agents, in their follow-up, in the work carried out by animal welfare organisations, and in the tasks assigned to veterinarians), the animals and the procedures (intermediate non-conformity, the 3Rs strategy and the endpoint are to be reworked) as well as the documents (minor non-conformity, certain obligatory mentions are missing from the documents).

The major non-conformity is connected to the fact that several hundred mice have been reused in experiments before the Ministry of Higher Education, Research, and Innovation and/or the ethical committee had given their agreement. Worse, one of the projects had even been implemented before the request had been filed! And this, for projects of which the oldest dates back to 20 November 2019, is more than a year and a half before this inspection.

Hundreds of mice have therefore been experimented on again and again for years without authorisation and have been kept in non-standard living conditions under the supervision of staff who are poorly trained and are therefore incompetent with regard to animal welfare! We think that these mice, each of which is an individual in its own right, have suffered mistreatment, and we are calling for a suspension of the agreement from the Genclis company. Our complaint went to the public prosecutor on 6 April.

Translated from the French by Joely Justice