ANSES is involved in five new projects that have been selected by the EU's Horizon Europe research programme. Some of them started in the first half of 2022, while others will begin this autumn.

For the very first time, human cases of foodborne infection with tick-borne encephalitis virus were observed in France in 2020. Several ANSES laboratories responded in order to understand the circumstances, improve the detection of the virus in raw-milk products, and thus prevent the risk of similar cases occurring. The initial results of their work were recently published.

The European Human Biomonitoring Initiative (HBM4EU) was the first large-scale European project aiming to harmonise measurements of exposure to chemicals in the population and assess the health effects of this exposure. Having started on 1 January 2017, it ended with a closing meeting in late June 2022. Below we look back at ANSES's contributions, which helped prioritise the substances to be studied and define guidance values associated with health risks for several substances.

The data of the National Network for the Monitoring and Prevention of Occupational Diseases, led by ANSES, have highlighted differences in the industry sectors and environmental triggers of workers with occupational asthma.

Escherichia coli (E. coli ) is a bacterium found in the digestive tract of humans, other mammals and birds. Although the majority of E. coli strains are harmless, some of them can cause serious cases of diarrhoea and even, less often, death. ANSES has developed a faster and more targeted method for detecting pathogenic E. coli in food, in particular in raw milk products.

Every week in France, 83% of children and adolescents and nearly 80% of working adults and students take one or more meals outside their home. ANSES conducted a review of the foods consumed and the nutritional intakes of these meals taken away from home. Mass catering, i.e. school and company canteens, appears to be more in line with current dietary recommendations than other categories of out-of-home catering. The Agency therefore advocates providing easier access to it for as many people as possible. Conversely, ANSES warns of the poor nutritional quality of fast-food restaurants, which are increasingly popular with the French.