Monday 19th of April 2021: SETE meeting

Ninth meeting of the COT and COC SETE subgroup

COT/COC subgroup on the synthesis and integration of epidemiological and toxicological evidence in risk assessments

Agenda

Agenda of the ninth Meeting, Monday 19th of April 2021, 09:00 am to 12:00 pm, via teleconference

1. Welcome and goals of meeting
2. Discussion of the practical examples in Annex 2: assessment of the example chemicals (caffeine, cadmium, tropane alkaloids) and visualisation of the conclusions
3. Discussion of the comments by COC and COT and timelines to finalise the document(s) for the next COC and COT Meetings in July 2021.
4. Final steps: UK roadmap on NAMs (Olivia Osborn)
5. AOB

Minutes

Present:

Chair: Alan Boobis 

Committee Members:

• Phil Botham
• Gill Clare
• Valentina Guercio
• Gunter Kuhnle            
• George Loizou        
• David Lovell 
•  Neil Pearce
•  Lesley Rushton
• Mireille Toledano
• Heather Wallace                   

Secretariat:

• Barbara Doerr         FSA
• David Gott               FSA
•  Britta Gadeberg       PHE

Officials:

• Olivia Osborne        FSA

Apologies were received by Alison Gowers.

The Chair welcomed Members and other attendees.

The aim of this meeting was to address the comments made by the Committees at the respective May meetings and finalise Annex 2 of the draft report for discussion at COT and COC on July 6thth and July 15th, 2021, respectively.

Following the comments by COT and COC, additional text on in silico methods will be added to the in the in vitro section (Section 3.2.) and the definition on weight of evidence and bias will be expanded in the glossary. Furthermore, the colour scheme for the visualization of causality will be changed to a more accessible colour scheme.

Members discussed and finalised the examples in Annex 2 of the draft report. For all three examples, caffeine, cadmium and tropane alkaloids (TAs) the draft guidance in Annex 1 was applied to the available evidence and a conclusion was reached on whether evidence for an association between the chemical and the specific effect identified in the problem formulation was weak, moderate or strong. Members then concluded on how likely it was that this association was causal, based on integration of all lines of evidence and agreed on the placement of the chemicals on the graph to reflect the conclusions.

The 2nd draft report will be presented to the COT and COC at the July meetings for comment.

Olivia Osborne from the FSA attended the meeting to take any comments and answer any questions Members had on the UK’s roadmap to NAMs, in preparation for a workshop in 2021.