Codes of Practice working methods – Research report

CoPs are not recommendations that can be applied at the discretion of the user. A CoP that has been drawn up by experts, and is current, and recognized in the field of animal research, must be complied with under the Experiments on Animals Act. Deviations from CoPs are only permitted if justification can be provided for this. Government trainee Jeffrey de Hoogen has drafted recommendations on how to work with CoPs. He examined both CoPs published by us and other CoPs that are used in practice but were published by us.

In his report, he discusses the importance of CoPs and the current status of Dutch CoPs. He also discusses the process of drafting a CoP, and developed a workflow to this end. The NCad is coordinating the development of new CoPs and the updating of the existing CoPs together with the IvD Platform. An expert working group is responsible for writing and updating the actual CoPs.