More than 20,000 scientific research projects using live animals have been authorized by the research ministry in France since 2013 outside of the regulatory framework. On February 8, the Paris administrative court ruled that 10 authorizations granted in early 2022 for a five-year period were "deemed inadequate." These 10 research projects involve a total of 342,780 animals (mainly mice and rats, but also rabbits, hamsters and 14 macaques); 13% of them were subjected to "severe" level procedures, which are particularly stressful or painful, such as tumor grafting.

The organization Transcience brought this case to court and is campaigning "by all legal means" for the development of scientific research without the use of animals. It relied on the French rural code, which, since the transposition of a European directive in 2013, has stipulated that prior to authorization, all projects must be subject to an assent issued by an "animal experimentation ethics committee" approved by the ministry. These committees must ensure that projects are justified in terms of their benefit-damage balance and that they have been designed with the 3Rs in mind ("replace" the use of animals, "reduce" and "refine" – eliminate or alleviate their pain). Yet all these ethics committees operated without any approval until 2022.

The identity of the laboratories whose authorizations have been revoked is not public. It is known, however, from the "non-technical summaries" filed on the European Alures platform, that two of the projects are pre-market toxicity tests. Others relate to medical research into infectious and immune disorders, and cancer immunotherapy. One of the institutions mentioned that it needed macaques to "prove the effectiveness of a visual restoration method developed at [its] institute: the retinal implant."

All these experiments are supposed to have come to a halt since February 13, the date of the judgment notification, even though the research ministry claims it intends to appeal (which does not suspend the court's decision). The ministry pointed to a loss of money and prestige for the establishments that would find themselves unable to honor studies within the stipulated deadlines, and wider impacts on the reputation of French research. It argued, unsuccessfully, before the administrative judge that a repeal of the authorizations "would only result in the death of more animals than initially planned," since these scientific research projects would have to start from scratch with new authorizations.

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