About us

The Norwegian Committee for the Protection of Animals Used for Scientific Purposes advises both the supervisory authority and the animal welfare bodies at the individual establishments that use animals for scientific purposes. It also promotes harmonised implementation and exchange of information on the 3Rs (Replace, Refine and Reduce), animal welfare and ethics in this field.

Forsøksdyrkomitéen is appointed by the Ministry of Agriculture and Food. The Norwegian Food Safety Authority provides the secretariat of the committee.

The committee is appointed pursuant to Article 49 of Directive 2010/63/EU of 22 September 2010 on the protection of animals used for scientific purposes:

Article 49 – National committees for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes
«1. Each Member State shall establish a national committee for the protection of animals used for scientific purposes. It shall advise the competent authorities and animal-welfare bodies on matters dealing with the acquisition, breeding, accommodation, care and use of animals in procedures and ensure sharing of best practice.
2. The national committees referred to in paragraph 1 shall exchange information on the operation of animal-welfare bodies and project evaluation and share best practice within the Union.»

Here you can read more about the use of animals for scientific purposes in Norway, and here you can find answers to some of the questions we receive.

Mandate

In January 2024, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food approved the mandate of the committee. Read the mandate here: Mandate

Annual reports and meeting minutes

We want openness about the work of the committee, and you can find all our meeting minutes and annual reports here.

The committee also holds one annual dialogue meeting with the ministries (the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Fisheries), two annual dialogue meetings with the Laboratory Animal Administration (Forsøksdyrforvaltningen) and dialogue meetings with Norecopa as needed.

Committee members

Leader: Kristine Hansen
Kristine Hansen is a veterinarian and has worked as a university lecturer at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) for 12 years. There she has had two periods as personnel with special control responsibility (PMSK) and has been responsible for teaching laboratory animal science to animal care students, veterinary students, technicians and researchers. She also worked with the university’s Training Clinic with Alternatives. She holds a PhD in toxicology from NMBU, awarded in 2022, and today she works at CELL (Centre on Experiential Legal Learning) at the Faculty of Law, University of Oslo (UiO).
Member: Andrew M. Janczak
Andrew M. Janczak is professor of animal welfare and animal behaviour at the Section for Animal Welfare, Epidemiology and Population Medicine, Faculty of Veterinary Medicine, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), where he coordinates the research group Computational Ethology and Precision Animal Welfare. He researches behaviour and welfare in pigs and poultry, with particular focus on behavioural development, cognition, stress physiology and harmful behaviour such as tail biting and feather pecking. The work combines ethology, digital phenotyping and applied artificial intelligence (AI). He is the course coordinator for the mandatory course VET353 Animal Welfare for veterinary students, as well as for the PhD courses in research ethics (VET400) and practical use of AI (VET422). You can read more about his research and projects on his personal website: https://andrewmjanczak.life/
Member: Anton Krag
Anton Krag is a trained zoologist and works as general manager of Dyrevernalliansen. Anton has worked with animal protection and animal rights for over 25 years. He was the animal protection organisations’ representative for eight years in the former Laboratory Animal Committee (Forsøksdyrutvalget) (2001-2009). He was previously appointed national expert on alternatives to animal testing by the Norwegian Food Safety Authority (2016-2021).
Member: Gro Flatekval
Gro Flatekval is a veterinarian and is employed as special adviser and PMSK (personnel with special control responsibility) at the Department of Comparative Medicine (KPM) at Oslo University Hospital. The PMSK responsibility is shared by several employees in the department. She has previous experience as a named veterinarian and manager at KPM. She takes part in the development, running and teaching of the national theoretical course in laboratory animal science, CAREIN. She holds a PhD in immunology from 2009 and completed the LabVet Europe programme for named veterinarians in 2020.
Member: Kathrine A. Ryeng
Kathrine A. Ryeng is a veterinarian and works as a researcher at the Institute of Marine Research, Tromsø department, where her main tasks are research and advisory work on animal welfare in marine mammals in connection with various human-caused impacts. In her doctoral work she focused on «Reduction», one of the 3Rs, through the development of a new experimental design. She has also worked on the development of regulations in the field of animal welfare, including regulations on animals used in research.
Member: Kristine Gismervik
Kristine («Stine») Gismervik is a veterinarian with a PhD and also a master’s degree in food safety. She is employed as Scientific coordinator for animal welfare fish at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute, where among other things she leads the Fish Welfare Committee, a collaboration platform with the Institute of Marine Research that among other things focuses on knowledge sharing about fish welfare. Stine is responsible for the welfare chapter of the Fish Health Report, which from 2021 includes animals used in research. She serves on the animal welfare body at the Norwegian Veterinary Institute and is the responsible supervising veterinarian for two external research institutes. She has committee experience since 2022 from NENT (the National Committee for Research Ethics in Science and Technology), and has otherwise worked as a senior researcher in several projects that have focused on the development of welfare indicators.
Member: Nina Sandlund
Nina Sandlund is trained in aquamedicine at the University of Bergen, is an authorised aquamedicine biologist and has been employed since 2004 as a research fellow and later researcher at the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen. There she has worked on disease in both wild and farmed salmon and marine fish. In recent years she has also worked on the «Risk report Norwegian fish farming». Since 2019 she has been head of the central animal welfare body at the Institute of Marine Research.
Member: Rolf-Arne Ølberg
Rolf-Arne Ølberg is a veterinarian and works at Kristiansand Zoo, where he is professionally responsible for the animal department. He has worked with zoo animals for over 20 years, with a focus on animal health and animal welfare. He has completed a three-year residency at Toronto Zoo and holds a doctorate in zoo and wildlife medicine from the Ontario Veterinary College. For the last ten years he has also worked as a veterinarian on various research projects with free-living wild animals.