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European Society of Endocrinology

ESE

The European Society of Endocrinology is at the centre of Europe's endocrine community.

Lobbying Activity

Meeting with Peter Liese (Member of the European Parliament) and Deutsche Umwelthilfe e.V.

5 Mar 2025 · Austausch

Meeting with Alina Nedea (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera Rodríguez), Petra Nemeckova (Cabinet of Executive Vice-President Teresa Ribera Rodríguez) and Endocrine Society

5 Mar 2025 · To hear interest representative’s view on the impact of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals on health.

Meeting with Sirpa Pietikäinen (Member of the European Parliament)

5 Mar 2025 · Endocrine disruptors

Meeting with Jessika Roswall (Commissioner) and

5 Mar 2025 · REACH and the regulation of endocrine disruptors

Meeting with Oliver Schenk (Member of the European Parliament)

5 Mar 2025 · Recent developments of Endocrine research

Meeting with Martin Hojsík (Member of the European Parliament) and Karolinska Institutet

4 Mar 2025 · Chemical policies, endocrine disrupting chemicals

Meeting with Javi López (Member of the European Parliament, Rapporteur) and Endocrine Society

4 Mar 2025 · Water pollutants

Response to Commission Roadmap to phase out animal testing

15 Oct 2024

On behalf of the European Society of Endocrinology (ESE), the European Society for Paediatric Endocrinology (ESPE), we the Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals (EDCs) Working Groups of both societies would like to take this opportunity to provide comments on the here outlined roadmap to phase out animal testing in chemical safety assessments. Our communities very well understand and share societal concerns regarding animal testing and strongly support the intensification of efforts to develop and adopt alternative approaches including for the identification of EDCs, chemicals that disrupt our hormonal systems leading to disease. Large investments in the development and validation of non-animal testing methods, with a better or equal performance in comparison to the traditional methods, are essential to enable this transition in the future. Unfortunately, currently animal testing remains necessary to continue the identification of EDCs, and a rushed transition risks turning humans and our children into test subjects for chemical exposures. EDC identification will still need intact animal testing because the available in vitro/silico methods are not yet predictive enough. The endocrine system is a highly complex network of different glands, the hormones they produce, and their target cells, tissues and organs that together regulate development, reproduction, metabolism and cognition. Small changes in one hormone system can impact other systems, even across generations. These complex interactions require animal models to fully assess the impact of external factors, such as chemical exposures. The metabolic and reproductive systems, for example, are difficult to mimic by means of alternative testing methods. In addition, there are no non-animal methods to model developmental from embryo to adulthood, chronic lifelong exposure effects, or transgenerational effects. In vitro screening approaches or NAMs have future potential to be used in high-throughput settings to screen the thousands of untested chemicals on the market for health hazards. This will be enabled by investments in developing and validating batteries of NAMs that are predictive of adverse human health outcomes. This could substantially reduce the number of animals used in chemical safety testing. In general, there is a lack of sensitive endpoints for endocrine disruption, with some notable exceptions (e.g. bisphenol and mammary gland development), that could be used in a regulatory context. Critical effects of chemical exposuressuch as impacts on the thyroid system, reproductive toxicity in males and females, developmental neurotoxicity, immune toxicity, and metabolismneed to be identified before predictive and sensitive NAMs can be developed to cover them. Such critical effects cannot be identified in non-animal models. In their current form, in vitro systems/NAMs alone should not be used to clear chemicals from causing adverse health effects to adults and children. For all animal research, we as the representative of over 23.000 European endocrinologists including many clinical and basic researchers, support the 3R principle (Reduce, Refine, Replace) and strongly feel that animal testing should only be applied in case of scientific necessity where alternative methods are unable to obtain the same outcomes. The principle should be more widely implemented in for example chemical health risk assessment to reduce and refine the use of animals, and to replace them when scientifically possible. Moreover, existing information in the literature and dossiers should be more transparent and utilised to avoid unnecessary animal experiments. And finally, the legal basis for identifying EDCs is adverse outcomes in an intact organism. If animal testing is phased out, chemicals cannot be classified as EDCs and regulated accordingly. The regulatory framework for chemical management must first be updated in to align with new test methods.
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Meeting with Martin Hojsík (Member of the European Parliament, Shadow rapporteur)

6 Jun 2023 · EDCs, chemical policies, REACH, CLP