One of the goals of the European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) is to develop alternatives to animal testing for assessing the hazards and risks of substances. One of the goals of the European Partnership for the Assessment of Risks from Chemicals (PARC) is to develop alternatives to animal testing for assessing the hazards and risks of substances.

Several teams from ANSES are going to make cheese in a laboratory, in order to study the risk of pathogenic organisms being transmitted via cheese consumption. This will be a complex task, due to the precautions that will need to be taken to avoid any external contamination by the micro-organisms under study.

A study to which ANSES contributed has revealed the adverse effects of the use of plant protection products on bumblebee populations. It found that on sites where the highest quantities of product residues were measured, colonies had fewer offspring and lower weights. The study's findings were published in the journal Nature on 29 November 2023.

Analysing hair can be an effective way of monitoring exposure to chemicals that are rapidly eliminated from the body. This was the finding of a study conducted by the French Agency for Food, Environmental and Occupational Health & Safety (ANSES), the Luxembourg Institute of Health (LIH) and the French Institute for Industrial Environment and Risks (INERIS). This study indicated the compounds for which this analysis was most relevant.

On Monday, 16 October, as part of the National Research Programme for Environmental and Occupational Health (PNR EST), ANSES is issuing two calls for research projects, on environmental and occupational health and the theme of radiofrequencies. The aim is to gain a better understanding of issues that are still relatively unexplored, but which are considered to be of major importance to human health and ecosystems. Multidisciplinary projects incorporating socio-economic aspects and holistic approaches are eagerly awaited.

To make it easier for the entire scientific community to access collections of micro-organisms, in line with the "One Health" approach, ANSES took part in the European CARE project, funded by the One Health European Joint Programme (EJP) coordinated by the Agency.

ANSES has taken part in preclinical trials of a potential vaccine against sarbecoviruses, the coronaviruses responsible for severe acute respiratory syndrome. In hamsters, this vaccine was equally effective against all the SARS-CoV-2 variants studied. These results suggest the potential for vaccines whose protection does not diminish with the appearance of new SARS-CoV-2 variants or new sarbecoviruses.

Listeria monocytogenes is a ubiquitous bacterium found in food, livestock and wild animals, soil, water and vegetation. The European ListAdapt project focused on the ability of strains of this bacterium to adapt to these different environments. It found that this ability is independent of the strains' environments of origin or their belonging to a given sub-group.

After more than five years, the One Health European Joint Programme (One Health EJP) will be ending on the 30th of September 2023. On this occasion, ANSES, as the Coordinator of the Programme, is holding the final meeting that will bring together members of the 44 partner organisations, alongside key European and international stakeholders, on the 11th and 12th of September, in the premises of the French Ministry of Health and Prevention in Paris. The One Health EJP (OHEJP) gathered researchers in the fields of animal health, public health and food safety to achieve significant advances in the areas of foodborne zoonoses, antimicrobial resistance and emerging zoonotic threats. Beyond research results, the programme has created a unique EU consortium supporting and, above all, implementing the One Health approach in food safety.

Ticks are the leading vector of disease for animals, and rank second for humans. Lyme disease, the best-known tick-borne illness, is caused by a bacterium. Tests have been conducted on an innovative vaccine targeting the tick microbiota, with a view to reducing tick infection by this bacterium. This work was carried out by INRAE in collaboration with ANSES and the Alfort National Veterinary School, and the results were published in the journal Microbiome on 24 July.