Rats and mice experimented on: One Voice condemns Inserm to reveal its forced swimming footage
In April 2022, we asked a laboratory linked with Inserm (French National Institute for Health and Medical Research) to provide us with its videos of forced swimming. Two years later and despite opposition from this organisation, the Paris Administrative Tribunal has just compelled them to send us the footage within one month. A decision that is consistent with transparency, which we have been fighting for for a long time!
Photo credit : Understanding Animal Research
To justify their refusal to send us the videos of forced swimming filmed on their premises, the Neurocentre Magendie mentioned… copyright! We were outraged that they would use such an argument to hide the footage from the public, which results from standardised tests that, naturally, are fairly typical. Although the Committee for Access to Administrative Documents (CADA), who we referred to, refused to go along with us, the Paris Administrative Tribunal has made an unambiguous decision.
Following the hearing on 12 April 2024, the Paris Administrative Tribunal ruled that Inserm’s recordings:
“Were carried out with bias with a fixed camera connected to a computerised tracking system to register the data resulting from subjecting laboratory mice and rats to common and standardised tests with a view to collecting and automatically processing them in order to produce reports on the basis of predefined settings. Therefore, these recordings cannot be considered as an original creation reflecting the creator’s personality, and thus cannot be qualified as intellectual property.” Extract from the ruling issued by the Paris Administrative Tribunal.
In favour of more transparency
Based on these conclusions, the legal system ordered Inserm to send us their footage before 3 June. A significant result to highlight these experiments that are extremely stressful for rats and mice who are plunged into containers of water, having no way of knowing if they will survive, and which the Ministry of Research and Higher Education persists in authorising. And all of this while a growing number of businesses and universities are moving away from these practices. Faced with resistance from an industry that prefers to make statements in place of revealing the actual facts , we will continue to reveal what is happening in laboratories for the animals.
Sign our petition to call for the end of forced swimming tests!