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On 5 December, the sixth annual report of the agreement of the Confederation of Scientific Societies of Spain (COSCE) for transparency in animal experimentation was presented. Spain was the second country to adopt this agreement, which has the highest number of signatories in the world: 166 organisations in our country, including SEBiot.

The presentation was attended by Isabel Fabregat, IDIBELL researcher, coordinator of the COSCE committee and member of the area of life sciences and health, Amanda Sierra, Ikerbasque researcher at the Achúcarro centre and deputy coordinator of the COSCE committee, Javier Guillén, representative of AAALAC International and EARA, and Lluís Montoliu, researcher at CNB-CSIC and CIBERER-ISCIII, representing the other members of the COSCE Committee for the Study of the Use of Animals in Scientific Research. Montoliu pointed out that this year a total of 159 organisations (96% of the subscribers to the agreement) have responded to the survey to prepare the report, and that their responses show the strong commitment of the Spanish scientific community to transparency in the use of animals in scientific experimentation.

According to the survey:

• 72% of the signatory entities have published news on their institution’s website related to animal research.
• 76% have participated in scientific outreach activities (10% more than in the previous year) and 86% have provided access to external visitors (5% more than in the previous year).
• Since the first report in 2018, reference to the use of animals in research in relation to the media has increased from 37% to 67%.
• 17% of the organisations have an institutional policy on the communication of animal models used in research in press releases and communiqués, and 34% intend to implement it in the future.
• 100% have an institutional statement on the use of experimental animals on their website, and 82% have this statement visible in three clicks or less from the homepage.

Ten countries now have agreements on transparency in the use of animals in scientific experiments. Alongside the UK and Spain, which were the first, similar agreements have been signed by scientific bodies in Portugal, Belgium, France, Germany, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Switzerland and Australia. There is a growing awareness that, as long as the use of animal models remains necessary for scientific research, it is essential to communicate to society, in terms that are accessible to everyone, all the work that is done with animals in biomedical research and its relevance to human and animal health. This is underlined in the article En experimentación animal debemos ser muy transparentes, written jointly by the members of the COSCE Commission for the Study of the Use of Animals in Scientific Research and which has just been published in the Spanish edition of the online newspaper The Conversation.