August 25th 2019
Until 2013, France released their animal research statistics on a triennial basis. Since 2014 and the implementation of EU Directive 2010/43, the French Ministry of Higher education, Research and Innovation began publishing animal use statistics on an annual basis. According to the 2019 figures, France conducted 1,865,403 procedures on animals in 2019, a 2.4% decrease compared to 2018.
There were decreases in the use of mice (-5%) and fish (-11%) and increases in rats (+4%), rabbits (+3%) and birds (+53%). Mice, fish, rats, rabbits and birds accounted for 95% of all animal use in France in 2019. Dogs, cats and primates, which receive particular media and public attention accounted for a mere 0.55% of all animal use.
Mild or Non-Recovery (where the animal is anaesthetized and never woken up) accounted for 54% of procedures, Moderate accounted for 32%, and Severe procedures accounted for 14%, a high proportion relative to most European countries. Most of the procedures classified as Severe were performed on mice (179,430 procedures), but there were also significant numbers of fish (49,146 procedures) and rats (22,324 procedures).
We have limited data for the trend graph, but the last three years show a slight rise, though down from the 2010 numbers. Overall, France remains one of the biggest animal users in Europe alongside the UK and Germany Other information that can be found in the full data tables.
~Speaking of Research
Speaking of Research 
One of the reasons that France has a higher proportion of ‘severe’ procedures compared to the EU average is that the mouse ascites method for the production of monoclonal antibodies still appears to be in common use, despite there being alternative methods available – NB. the ascites method has not been used at all in the UK since 2012. The figures released by the EU on 15th July 2021 highlighted that this method (which caused ‘severe’ suffering in around 94% of reported uses) was used around 53,000 times in France during 2018 – out of the 54,941 total uses of this method across all Member States. Do you have figures for this in the 2019 stats for France?